How do I reorganize my photos for lightroom

I have been using lightroom for several years but I have never been able to get everything organized the way I want. Over time, I have had various computer problems and many frustrating hours trying to locate photos and get them all in lightroom. I have switched hard drives, computers, switched from jpg to raw, used different programs. Pictures seem to be all over the place between my external drive, and my computer's drive. In many different folders.

I just want all these photos to be in one place and for lightroom to see them. I am so sick of seeing the little question mark icon saying that lightroom can't find the photo (even though I know it's on the computer). I want all the photos on my internal drive in one place. And then I want lightroom to "see" them all. I use a mac.

How do I start?

Stefan

I would reorganize them within lightroom.

You are getting the question mark because you are moving or renaming the files outside of LR's interface, and it no longer knows where to find them. First you have to fix that issue of relinking all the images (and try not to get into that situation again.)

A simple example to get all images into one place would be to :

1) Go to Library module.
2) In left hand panel hit plus next to "Folder." And create a new folder somewhere on computer.

In that folder panel it also lists locations of all files it is referencing within LR... so

3) Drag each of those folders into your newly created folder.

This should end up with your new folder you created on hard-drive having subfolders with all your images underneath. There are variations on this of course... say if you want all images in one single folder. (For that you may be able to just select all the images in the library and drag them to the new folder.)