caption captions not being imported during image upload

Site URL: https://www.photojournalism.org/home-1

Hello. The password for the page is "circle." This is a hidden page I'm building on an existing site; the page will go live Saturday. You'll see there are two galleries stacked; the top is the new one that I'm having trouble with, and the bottom is the old one I'll be deleting (I copied an existing page). I just kept the second gallery up so you could see the difference. 

I'm having some trouble with captions. Image metadata importing is enabled for my  site. In my gallery block (simple gallery), I have captions enabled. I have IPTC data embedded in photos, but when I upload them, the captions don't seem to be coming with them. They're not showing up either in the image description or in the caption field of the gallery. 

If I manually type in the image description field, it will show up (you might see the word "test" under the first image in the gallery), so it's clear it's the import that's the issue. 

I've successfully done this many times, and just can't figure out what's going on. 

I searched in the forum and saw a similar questions posed last spring, and a rep responded they were looking into it. Really hoping it's been resolved by now. Any thoughts/help/insight/advice?

Thanks very much.

This has been acknowledged as an issue by Squarespace Customer Care but has not been prioritised as a fix. (Bug list for Circle members).

If this is causing you problems, please report this to Customer Care so they understand the number of users who are impacted by this. are also experiencing this.

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Looks like it's a bug that's not a priority for them to fix, according to my discussion with CS. This creates a huge amount of extra labor, and given how many photographers use Squarespace, it's not a small issue.

Was there ever any response or answer to this problem? None of my info from Lightroom is being imported.

It's been almost a year since this issue was raised and it still hasn't been fixed. Somehow photo and painting image galleries are not that important to Squarespace. It's too bad as this prevents my creating new sites for photographers and painters who want gallery websites. Does anyone know how we can get support to get active on fixing this?

I would like an answer as well. With hundreds of images to import, this is a huge bug.

If this is a problem you want to see them solve, then we need to get a lot more users to ask for it. It's obviously not sitting near the top of their priority list for bug fixes and to get it to the top needs many more users to complain about it. It's the old "squeaky wheel" concept. Frankly it's keeping me from creating several new websites on Squarespace because I want my image galleries to be able to read the file metadata. So, if this is a problem for you also, add your request to Support so they'll get the message that this is important!!

I did, and heard back from them.  And in other words, It's on some list and may or may not be addressed. It's not a glamorous or marketable thing, so it gets bumped down the line. Reminds me of Adobe.

It sucks because I have a new site and now need to cut and paste a couple almost two hundred images worth of metadata from Lightroom.

Thanks for contacting us about this. We’ve noted your report with our Engineering and Design teams for review. They’ll use this feedback when creating fixes and improvements for future releases.
There are many variables that we need to test against before we can make changes, and we can’t guarantee changes for this issue in the immediate future. That said, our teams consider all feedback, and your input is always encouraged.

I appreciate that Engineering and Design teams must be very busy people making Squarespace even better than it is. However, I chose to use Squarespace for photo portfolio websites for my clients because it's well suited for displaying portfolios. One of the reasons for making this choice was because your website displays a way to automatically import meta data from images when they are uploaded. But, it's now been at least one year that this feature has not worked and this is preventing me from creating at least 3 new websites for Squarespace. So I do believe the is a marketable thing as it brought me in to creating Squarespace websites and I am extremely disappointed that it seems to have such a low priority for this bug to be fixed.

This bug still appears to be outstanding. It's a killer for me. To be fair to Squarespace I can get a full refund for the years subscription. This is a killer for me so that looks like the likely outcome.

There are alternatives that will do this in SmugMug and Adobe Portfolio, but I prefer building websites with Squarespace, which is why it's so frustrating that fixing this bug has been such a low priority.

Stil super disappointing this has not been addressed. It used to work -- how hard can it be to fix? 
It makes me regret suggesting a site I manage move to Squarespace. Lesson learned. 

Just migrated my site from 7 to 7.1 and then discovered this bug. Not ideal for any site that uses images..

We need to generate more discussion about getting this bug fixed to get more attention paid to it. It's the old "squeaky wheel" thing.

I've been preparing to move back to squarespace from adobe portfolio as I want more functionality. But I just discovered this bug, and that its apparently been unfixed for well over a year. wow.

I'm starting to reconsider if this is worthwhile if I have to input all this data manually on hundreds of images. 

Doesn't seem like a great idea to get involved with a company that refuses to fix a pretty major bug for over a year. What the heck is their priority? Making more youtube ads? Sure seems like that's all they care about.  

I don't understand it either how a company can offer a setting like this, have it be non-functioning for over a year and not fix it. It continues to prevent me from moving 3 other websites over to Squarespace because they are all photo image websites and I don't want to have to manually enter the descriptions for each image. 

PLEASE, does anyone at Squarespace read our pleas for a fix? You offer this feature but don't repair it when it doesn't work. Come on, please pay attention to our problem here!! Thank you in advance----

Marty

Argh.  Thought I was doing something wrong then found this thread.  I just submitted this bug to Squarespace.

Thank you. The more of us who report this issue the better and maybe they'll get the message that this is important to us.

I've submitted multiple bug reports now and have had email replies from Support.

Apparently not a big deal.

To me it is after cutting and pasting all these captions.

Currently, our engineers are still looking into this issue with the metadata not importing in gallery sections, so I don't have any updates to provide. With that said, I hear what you're saying, and can absolutely understand where you're coming from. We also want you to have the smoothest experience while using Squarespace, and when unexpected issues come up I can definitely recognize it can impact that experience.

So, it looks like image metadata import has been broken for at least two years. All I want is for the IPTC Caption field to be copied into my Gallery Section images' "Description" when I import images so I don't have to manually copy and paste 547 times. But NOOOOOOOOOO. Tried different IPTC and EXIF fields and both Lightroom and  XnViewMP to edit metadata, but SquareSpace isn't importing it. And, yes, I read the articles, and SquareSpace claims this feature works with Gallery Sections in version 7.1, which I'm using. Support says, and has been saying for two years, "It's a known issue. We'll take a look at it."

Has ANYBODY gotten this to work? Ever?

"our engineers are still looking into this issue"

18 months later and still nothing. If SS engineers can't fix this within 18 months, they never will. SquareSpace should stop advertising this "feature".

21 hours ago, CooperWhite said:

I've submitted multiple bug reports now and have had email replies from Support.

Apparently not a big deal.

To me it is after cutting and pasting all these captions.

Currently, our engineers are still looking into this issue with the metadata not importing in gallery sections, so I don't have any updates to provide. With that said, I hear what you're saying, and can absolutely understand where you're coming from. We also want you to have the smoothest experience while using Squarespace, and when unexpected issues come up I can definitely recognize it can impact that experience.

Yeah, I'm now facing the prospect of manually inputting 547 descriptions. Boo, hiss. And, on top of that, I'm going to have to manually drag each one into the correct position because SquareSpace can't SORT THEM BY FILENAME. Are you freaking kidding me? Rage turns to despair...

On 2/15/2023 at 4:09 PM, MartyC said:

Thank you. The more of us who report this issue the better and maybe they'll get the message that this is important to us.

Don't hold your breath. I found similar discussions here going back TWO YEARS.

On 12/5/2022 at 3:42 PM, MartyC said:

We need to generate more discussion about getting this bug fixed to get more attention paid to it. It's the old "squeaky wheel" thing.

No, it looks more like the old "mañana" thing.

Here's the latest Tech Support answer:

I understand your frustration here, however, I'm afraid the advisors are not involved in the process of bug fixes and feature fixing so we are unable to provide additional information regarding this including timeline as much as I would like to. You're welcome to continue checking in on this. If there's anything else we can do, please let us know.

Which begs the question, if I can't get an answer from (Tech Support) exactly what would be the point of me checking in again with them?

So stupid. But on the other hand I keep getting emails about new features.

😏