weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

Hi - I am a new user here, have been watching the posts over a number of months now and am awed by the good topics and help provided. Now I need help myself: I am also new to Lightroom 5, have been using it for a couple of weeks now and am fine with the development process, though I am sure I still need to learn a lot.

Today I was adding captions in Metadata, copying one text from one picture into the caption fields of a number of other pictures. Something went wrong, I am not sure what, but the Metadata shows all details as "mixed", I must have overwritten all the data. Is there a quick and easy way to "undo" my incorrect step, or how else can I retrieve the overwritten data in 15 photos.

Your help is greatly appreciated. Joe Weber

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

I have never heard of anybody trying to overwrite (?) Metadata. Do you shoot in raw? The Metadata is just a "side wagon" to a shot, I imagine it would confuse the "shit" out of every program, if it is "overwritten" with data not existing in the picture. I have no idea, why you would try such a thing, but I would certainly advice against in, sorry for not being of much help to your problem, but I just wanted to say that.

weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

Thanks for your input - and I certainly did not want to try to overwrite anything in Metadata. I formerly was using Picasa to work on my pictures, and there I can add a caption for each picture. Please correct me if I am wrong, as I know I have to learn a lot yet here in LR, but it appears to me that in LR I add captions to the photos in the Metadata "sidewagon" - is that correct?
In the process of doing this, I added a first text in photo 1, then copied the text to the "Caption" field in the further photos. I have been doing this for a couple of days, and all went well. But this time I believe I clicked first on the "File Name" field, then realized that this was the wrong field and clicked on the "Caption" field. After hitting enter, most of the fields in the Metadata "sidewagon" now show < mixed >.
This is not the end of the world for me as it only affects a few pictures, but I would be interested to know whether I can "undo" a incorrect input, akin to windows where I just click on the "undo" button.
I would be very happy to get further input - thanks and please excuse my possibly incorrect use of some terminology - I am still learning.
Joe Weber

weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

Final message - the situation has been resolved. I eventually went back to my work and miraculously the all Metadata showed up again. I guess I was just too concerned about having messed up and was hoping that I could "undo" the mistake, but after all it was not necessary.
This experience did give me a push though to finally reach out to the hoggers when needed - it was a good feeling to know that help is out there! So - thanks in any case.

big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

You didn't mess up!

This is not an error but a simple way to show that when 2 or more images are selected and have different keywords, titles, comments etc. LR shows the entry as mixed. If only 1 image is selected then the given meta data is shown. Now when you have a bunch selected and are given the mixed marker you can overwrite all in one shot.

As a bonus, before you start copy pasting a gazillion times, select all the photos you want, then click in the meta data field you wish to change and type some new text which changes all selected photos at once.

wcmoorejr Loc: Birmingham Alabama

BTW, just as an FYI. It is not crazy to write data into your metadata (exif). I use breezebrowser to group modify my exif on every shoot to add copywrite info, tags, description of photo shoot, and contact info.

I am glad that you were able to get your info back.

Regards,
Willie

flyguy Loc: Las Cruces, New Mexico

This is correct and all of this data can be added during the Library import process too!

lloydl2 Loc: Gilbert, AZ

another caution when adding captions and or keywords and wanting to propogate to multiple images. YOU MUST DO IT IN THE GRID VIEW it doesn't work if if try to do it from the film roll at the bottom.... if you select the photos to copy to in the film roll then you have to also use the sync option to get it to copy to all of the photos selected to be copied to.

weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

A big thank you to all you guys that responded - obviously I panicked after seeing that < mixed > slate on the Metadata panel - and with my very limited understanding of how LR works, I now up it one notch - thanks to your input - isn't it great that we can learn best from real or imagined mistakes - thanks again!