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

shootNameFormat setting

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.

Folders with underscores