Key words multiplied

[HansEverts]

Yesterday I updated the copyright field in a few years images. I launched a write back operation and the copyright fields were all OK.

BUT, all hierarchical keywords were transformed into individual keywords. So Country/France/Paris exists still as hierarchy, but there are now in addition individual keywords Country, France and Paris, all under @keywords.

With some work I can easily fix that, but I would like to be sure it does not repeat itself. I have looked at the metadata sections in the Help, but am still pretty confused.

So:
1) is there a way to fix it, apart from deleting each keyword;
2) how can I make sure it does not happen again.

In IM3 I had the keywords in the IPTC category fields.

[Mario]

IMatch stores hierarchical keywords in the LR hierarchicalSubject namespace. It then copies and flattens these keywords into the XMP:subject and IPTC:keyword metadata tags, depending on the options you have configured under Edit > Preferences > Metadata.

On import, IMatch imports keywords (and optionally also categories) into hierarchical keywords if you enable this. It uses the thesaurus to determine if a keyword like "hawaii" should be mapped to "location|beach|hawaii" or just imported as a flat keywords on the top level (hawaii). All this is controlled via the thesaurus and the Options under Edit > Preferences > Metadata.

I would need more details to analyze this.

[HansEverts]

Thanks,

I have deleted all those single keywords.

I found all those keywords came from a single folder. Yesterday I inadvertently moved that folder. When moving it back it updated all files.

In addition I just found that under preferences/metadata I had Write path elements checked. In the help it says "but instead it writes each element in the path as a separate keyword:", so I guess that is what happened.

Does that make sense?

By the way, the Help button on the Preferences/metadata screen brings you to the Metadata 2 help page. I have noticed wrong links a few times.

[jch2103]

Be sure to use the links at the bottom of Help pages to let Mario know when there's a problem with Help contents.

[HansEverts]

Yes, sorry, I will use the link in the Help.