DexterG

AlanP57 wrote: “You could always upload files directly to the Uploads folder.”

The problem is that I already have many images in subfolders that I want to move back to uploads. If I were to re-upload them as you suggest, I would have to manually re-place them in every post and page where they were previously referenced.

I manually removed the duplicate Post and Post_Metadata entries from the WP database using phpMyAdmin and everything is working OK now. Both Name sort and Date sort are showing the same number of images with no duplicates. Hooray! Thanks for your help.

I tried that this weekend but it made no difference. Just tried it again, no change.

In the MFL Reset plugin I noticed an option to “Display Attachment URLs”. When I did this it showed two unique Attachment IDs for the each duplicate image. I’m not sure if this is significant or not, but I thought it might be useful information to share.

Yes, I have SFTP access and I have confirmed that the actual image files only occur once. However, the WordPress Media Library creates two references to the same image file based on the dates when the original duplicate images were uploaded. I’ve since removed the duplicate files but the duplicate references still remain, both pointing to the same jpg image file. Here is an example of this:
https://synearth.net/armstrongjpg/
https://synearth.net/armstrongjpg-2/
Here is another:
https://synearth.net/earthpeoplejpg/
https://synearth.net/earthpeoplejpg-2/

Apparently, this condition (having multiple references to the same image) was the result of moving all of the images (including duplicates) to one folder (from the many date folders that they were originally uploaded into) using the MFL plugin.

That is helpful to know. Since I am relatively new to WordPress, I have no idea what is expected behavior and what is an indication of a problem. Smile.

Perhaps it would be helpful if I explained how I got to this place. The website that I am working on is at least 10 years old, and the media library had multiple copies of identical images uploaded on different dates by different people and used in different articles. Sometimes the images were named differently even though they were the exact same image. I decided the best way to sort out this mess would be to get your plug-in, create a single image folder, and then move all of the images into it. I then proceeded to rename or delete all of the duplicate images thinking that the references to them would all resolve to the one remaining canonical image. What happened, however, is that WordPress continued to retain the original image names and upload dates in its database even though many of these are now pointing to the same image.

For some reason when I view the images in the WP Media Library using Grid View and the default sort order, which appears to be by date, it shows only one occurrence of each image, but when I switch to List View and click on “File” to sort them by name it shows all of the duplicate references to each image, buy original name or upload date, as a separate copy of that image. And if I try to delete/remove any of these extra copies it also deletes the one actual image. What I have described above occurs in both Media Library Folders and WordPress Media because in my case there is only one images folder (uploads/images). I also created an uploads/pdfs folder, but that is irrelevant to this particular problem.

I wonder if I should delete all of my images from the media library and then re-import them from a local copy? But I assume that would break all of their placement links in every article and as feature images?

I just installed the 6.1.0 update and everything is working fine. No Javascript errors!