Lightroom Desktop: Syncing stuck forever

Thanks for the workaround! This worked like a charm :)

NIce!!

Well, I would love to say that this worked, but alas, when I selected all photos, the square grid view, and clicked on the cloud icon with the option key held down (Mac), there is no images shown. But the sync panel tells me that it is syncing one image. 

for the last 8 days...

I am having this problem intermittently... sometimes I can fix it by going to task manager and manually stopping all the Adobe/CC processes, then 1-20 images will sync on restart. The fix above works occasionally to get one more synced, but not consistently...neither flagging/starring images, or deleting and re-adding
Win10 Lightroom CC.

It worked for me too - syncing the last 5 photos on my desktop, many thanks.

Hi I am also having this issue - images not syncing. To date I have tried Rick's fix above as well as uninstalling and reinstalling the app. Nothing is working. I am a new user and very frustrated. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I am using the new Lightroom cc and Mac OS High Sierra. Any assistance would be appreciated!

This cloud icon you speak of. Where exactly is it supposed to be? And what does it look like?

The link to the icon you shared is apparently to an internal Adobe website, not one that us mortals can access. 

I do Steps 1, 2, 3 but no photos are shown after this so I cannot proceed to Step 4.  I have 1 Photo showing in perpetual Sync, but none according to Lightroom as shown after Step 3.

Hi, 
sorry I can not do step 3 because I dont know what is meant with "click the cloud icon". The screenshot doesnt work anymore.

Thx

Rick / Adobe,
Could you please share where the Cloud Icon is in desktop Mac Lightroom Classic CC ? Have you tried to copy images of this icon in your post as they are just blank boxes. I’m not seeing a cloud icon in the latest version of Lightroom on my desktop. I’ve tried all the steps above a few times and still not not syncing, it just sits on the same numbers.

My problem is: I travelled across Europe for six weeks and took 10,000 photos on three SD cards (500GB). Each day I would upload the 500 or so images into Lightroom Mobile on my iPad Pro and make edits. Now back home i’m trying to sync the edits back to my desktop external hard drive and Lightroom classic CC.

Question for Rick/Adobe about Lightroom, can I sync the edits from Lightroom mobile to images copied to my desktop from the SD cards? As i’ve tried syncing through the cloud but as you can imagine moving 500GB of data is laboriously slow and even worse it has stopped syncing after 10 hours. I’ve deleted sync errors and tried all the steps above and still not syncing. I have 5700 ‘All Synced’ into desktop Lightroom classic CC, but stuck on ‘Syncing’ 7400, while my iPad Lightroom mobile is still uploading 10,030 (of the original 10,174). While stuck I even uploaded (pretty quickly I must say!) all the photos directly from the SD cards to my Mac desktop and Lightroom classic CC without the edits. Of those images that have sync across also brought another 40MB ‘copy’ of each RAW photo file. So now I also have 6000 ‘synced duplicates’ in desktop Lightroom classic CC.

While traveling I figured out pretty quick that the 2TB cloud subscription was a waste of time as it takes forever even on the fastest internet service to upload 20, 50 or not to mention the total 500GB of photos.

Many thanks for a reply and solution to this problem.

Mine shows no images at all so there is nothing to select. Everything was fine until the power in my house went out while I was importing photos into LR. I can't see any information at all other than the blue circle spinning in the middle of the screen and in the cloud icon. Please help. I really need this resolved asap.

This suggested solution didn't work. When I click on the cloud and get the little dialog it shows everything to be OK. I still have the perpetual syncing 1 photo in LR Classic. I also tried "Rebuilding Sync Data" in the LR Classic preferences. Didn't work.

I am afraid to delete all the photos because I dont want to lose them!

Rick, I thought I would never run into this issue after so long but here I have a 1 photo stuck and dunno why. Holding Alt and clicking on Cloud icon does not seem to work anymore. How to solve it now?

I was having the same issue with one photo being stuck for days. I resolved it by 

1. Holding Alt+Clicking Cloud Icon
2. Pause, then unpause
3. Clicked the setting gear to the right.
4. Added copyright info and saved.

Now all is okay. Not sure if pausing/unpausing or changing copyright info did anything but these steps fixed a few day old frustration.

Prior to this I had done the following with no success.

• Uninstalled Lightroom and reinstalled. Didn't work.

• Removed photos from my last knowing import. Didn't work.

• Did the following steps found on https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/kb/known-issues.html. Did not work.

1. In the My Photos area in the left pane, select the All Photos album.
   
2. Switch to the Square Grid view , which displays photos as equal-sized thumbnails along with their flag status, sync status, and rating.
3. Click the filter  icon next to the Search bar to bring up the filter options.
4. From the filter bar options, choose Sync Status > Syncing. Lightroom now displays only those photos that it is trying to sync.
   
5. Press Ctrl+A (Win) or Command+A (Mac) to select all the photos displaying in the grid and then do any of the following:
6. Apply a flag or a star rating to selected photos.

• Hold Alt+Shift while opening Lightroom to reset preferences. That didn't work.

Any news on that? None of the workarounds worked so far for me. I've migrated my Lightroom Clasic catalog of 56000 files and 400 GB but over 19000 of those files are not able to sync. There is no way I'm going to delete originals and re-import those files as I would loose all the edits I've made in LR Classic.

When I had the issue I rebuilt the catalogue in Lightroom Classic and the issue disappeared. It may have been a coincidence as I don't understand why it would have anything to do with Lightroom CC. It takes a while though, and be sure to back up your current one.

How did you rebuild the catalog? I am on a PC

Any progress yet?

I have this issue and am fully up to date nearly a month later. 

Your suggestion of 'holding altshift while opening' does not present any option to reset preferences. 
This is incredibly frustrating since I currently use Lightroom on a daily basis and my libraries will not sync because it's stuck syncing two files for about a week now.

Please elaborate on your "reset preferences" theory for windows users.

Also, there is no cloud icon to click on, I can't see what you were talking about with that either

Hi Taz,

Are you using an older version of Lightroom? 

Here is a post on how to reset preferences for current and older versions:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/

Does that help?

I literally just uninstalled and reinstalled using creative suite and it's still stuck on the same two files but I'm definitely up to date.

I'm using Lightroom CC Classic.

This is what happens if I hold altshift while doubleclicking. 

No asking to reset preferences

OK this is ridiculous.

I have reset my preferences by removing the file as instructed because none of the functions you've described so far seem to exist (cloud icon, altshift while opening etc)

I have viewed the stuck files online via the link it provides and attempted to edit/rate them to make them move

I have uninstalled and reinstalled LR CC Classic

And it is STILL STUCK on the same two files!

What is going on??

OK... I'll apologize in advance for being so deliberately basic but...

The properties window will appear if you Alt-click your Lightroom shortcut. Maybe you didn't have the shift key held down. So, just to be clear...

Did you...?
1. Hold down the Alt key and the Shift key simultaneously
2. While holding those keys, double click the application icon or click on Lightroom Classic CC in the Creative Cloud Desktop App

That should do it.

Oh, and by the way, the original post is for Lightroom CC not Lightroom Classic so you wouldn't see the Cloud icon or the other things described in the steps I posted earlier

As screenshotted above, alt + shift while double clicking (precisely as you described) does not bring up the option to reset any preferences. Besides,I did it manually as described in the link provided and it did nothing but erase my preferences.

Still no joy. Any further suggestions from anyone?

There must be a way of making this infuriating program work as it should right?

Worked weirdly well at the international terminal at SFO (400 pics uploaded in 5 min after being stuck for hours/weeks). I don't know whether this suggests that some wifi systems or ISPs (or geographic locations or times of day) are better than others? I'm loathe to suggest that it means that all lightroom cc activity needs to happen at a specific airport ;-p

Hey Taz,

It turns out the behavior of the Alt key is different in Windows 10 so using shift/alt to bring up the reset dialog window doesn't work. (I filed a bug)

You can make it work by holding shift/alt while launching Lightroom from the Creative Cloud Desktop app but the reset dialog window opens behind the Creative Cloud app window... (I filed another bug)

Anyway... since it is Lightroom Classic you are using you can see the sync status of images in the Preferences window under the Lightroom Sync tab.

It may be that they are missing and you need to find them or you can remove them from the synced collection and try again. I found this post about it:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2378426

Let me know if that helps.

Rick

I found the files, both of which were edited shots I really would rather not have to permanently delete in order to make LR CC Classic (for which, is there just no tech support for this now or something?) deleted them using my LR Mobile on my phone. One was deleted and disappeared from the interminable 'pending' sync status. Good-oh, I thought.
The other however refuses to be deleted from my online library or sync list and despite no longer being accessible on LR mobile WILL NOT remove itself from the pending sync list! How is it that it worked for one file but not the other??

Why can I not view my library online anywhere and attempt to delete it from there?

How (and why) is the Creative Cloud different to my LR Library. Why would they not simply share a library.

This is one of the most infuriating and apparently incurable tech problem I've yet encountered as its on a program upon which I rely daily. 

Is there anyone I can contact for DIRECT help? Like someone who can actually FIX this ****ing problem considering how much I pay for this *****ing subscription?

> Why can I not view my library online anywhere and attempt to delete it from there?

Go to https://lightroom.adobe.com and you'll have access to all of your synced photos that are in the cloud, including access to delete problem photos.

I have just encountered the same problem, makes the Lightroom CC software unusable really, if you cannot sync.

I've had horrible experiences with getting both account and technical support for Lightroom CC.  The product is obviously not ready for prime time or was knowingly released with serious bugs just to get it out the door.  Terrible way to run a software business.

Hey. stuck here with 36K photos mid migration. Have you managed to solve the problem?

I completely agree with you. The syncing issue has made me abandon this software for good