Lightroom 2 and keywords

Fogcity

I am struggling with adding keywords to my photos in LR2--they are not showing up, even after allowing ample time for indexing. I have a race shoot coming up where I'll need to enter bib numbers (over 600) to keywords so participants can search for their bib number to find their photos. So I've been doing some trial uploads so I won't encounter this and have a meltdown on Monday when my pics are overdue and the search function isn't working

I am adding the keywords in the "Keywords" section of LR2, so I'm assuming that exports as part of the metadata that SM needs to identify it as a keyword. Yet no keywords show up in SM. I can go into the gallery settings on SM and do it but that is going to take waaayyyyy to long with that many photos.

I don't put quotes around my keywords--do I need to?

I am going to upgrade to LR3 shortly, and can do it this week if and only if that is going to help fix this problem and not make it worse......I'm hesitant to do any major software upgrades right now that might cause me more headaches than be helpful.

Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong? Any help much appreciated!!!

Fogcity

I think I figured out why my keywords weren't transferring over--my tests were to replace some already existing pics with keywords embedded--that didn't work. But when I create an entirely new gallery of pics with keywords, they do show up. Somehow the act of replacing doesn't transfer the metadata. So I think I'm okay.

Any advice on whether LR3 and the SM upload plugin will expedite processing for me?