Adobe Lightroom Import - How to change dash in folder name to underscore

I just organized all my old photos into this folder format YYYY/YYYY_MM/YYYY_MM_DD - see this blog for more info: How to Organize Photos by EXIF Date Taken with PowerShell

Lightroom doesn’t support that format, it only supports YYYY/YYYY-MM/YYYY-MM-DD - with dashes, not underscores.

Here’s how to hack it:

1. In Lightroom, create an import preset
2. Open the preset in a text editor like Notepad from here: C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Import Presets\User Presets
3. Change “shootNameFormat”

shootNameFormat = "%Y/%Y_%m/%Y_%m_%d",

1. Save the file
2. Close and reopen Lightroom.
3. Do an import, select your preset, and see your underscores.