Lost Catalog

I opened LR4 and got a message saying I could either upgrade or use exisiting catalog, which seemed weird. I said okay upgrade. Now my entire 30K image catalog is gone. All my images are where they should be but keywords, develop settings, and everything else is gone. Thousands of hours of work.... Gone. I tried to find my last back up ( weekly) and they are all gone too. LR seems to do something like this every 6 months to me. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I'll be polite and just move on....
.Jeet at Adobe Phone Support was able to fix it for me. The root of the problem was the conversion from 4 to 4 .1.
Something there made my catalog disappear. My backups were on another drive, if you use the search function in Windows it only looks on the C drive, you have to click to enable it to look at all the drives. The Adobe computer chat folks did not figure that out either.
My C drive filled up a year or so go so I added two drives, transferred my images to one as a main image storage and one for redundant image storage, I also made the redundant image storage the LR backup location. Jeet found the backup and all is well. Very painful but a happy ending.
It's also worth noting that most backup programs only back up the C drive, something I had not realized.
I also did not realize LR does not store image metadata with the image files, which scares me. It's all in the catalog file and ONLY in the catalog file. Yikes. In this case I first just reimported my images and was shocked to discover that the metadata- keywords and ratings were GONE.
Now I'm going to back up the backup in a few locations, not just one drive.

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Lightroom 4.4 crashed on Windows 7 Laptop, lost catalog info, won't import half my images.

Lightroom 4.4 crashed on Windows 7 Laptop today, lost catalog info, won't import half my images.
Not only is LR messed up, it deleted my day's shooting. Can't believe that.
Now it won't import (i.e. re-import) half my files.
Imported half, but had errors importing rest.
Corrupt catalog?
When I try to import the folders, it recognizes that they are in the catalog (I have "don't import duplicates" turned on).
After running through all the folders, it says, "Nothing to Import."
Any help?
Best,
Peter

Thanks dj_paige.
I installed a plugin, coincidence makes me thinks this might have cause a LR4.4 crash.
After rebooting my windows 7 laptop, LR had lost record of half my directories on the external drive, as seen in Library Module.
In Windows Explorer, the folders and images are still there.
I tried recovering the lost folder references in LR by doing an import on the external hard drive again.
It took about a half hour to run.
There was a report screen at the end of the process that said that LR was unable to import something like 1500 images.
I did not save the report screen. Maybe it is part of a log file somewhere to give you what it exactly said?
I do not profess to understand how catalogues work under the covers.
I only use one catalog at this point.
My guess is at this point I should de-commission the catalog (whatever it takes to do that - delete it, etc.) and just do a new, fresh import on my images.
I don't feel I lose anthing this way - I can't see where I would lose anything important. About 5-10% of the RAW images were processed and exported to jpg, just for web use for casual viewing. The jpg's are all still on the external hard drive.
Any suggestions are appreciated.
Cheers,
Peter

Where is my lost catalog?

I was working with a group of 12 photos in my cataalog, and it went away. I tried to revive, no luck. So I tried to import the items again -- the screen would not allow it because they were already in the catalog. How can I recover???
Thank you

Can you please check if some media filter switched off accidently. This can be checked through View->Media types.
Or else you can make a new catalog through File->Manage Catalogs->New and import images in this new catalog.

Lost catalogs after Lightroom 5.6 update

I reluctantly updated Lightroom 5.5 to 5.6 last night and the next time I tried to reopen Lightroom my most recent catalogs were gone. My iMac opened Lightroom with catalogs from a year ago. All of my most recent edited catalogs are MIA. The same thing happened the last time I did the update and I never did find the photos. I have tried relaunching in different versions, using Time Machine to back-up to a day before the upgrade but nothing has retrieved my most recent Lightroom set-up. Please help.

try File->Open Recent

How to restore lost catalog

I had import a new set of pictures and created a collection for them. I did something to loose my catalog an now when I go into Lightroom it shows an empty catalog. I tried to undo through edit but there was nothing to undo. It has changed my catalog source. How do I change that back? Thanks, Lucy (lightroom 5)

Hi Lucy.
It appears that Lightroom has created a new and empty catalog.
Try going into File>Open Recent and see if the original catalog can be found.
Tony Jay

I have lost catalog, previews and slideshow

I made a slide show. When I wnet in to change something the pictures would not come up in either slideshow, library or develope. An Error box said something about the previews were corrupted. I looked up what to do (delete the previews and let it rebuild) It did not work. Now I am in a really big mess. Others of my pictures are a missing. All the pictures from the slide show are missing. I know that the originals are still on my computer but I need to get back to the slideshow and how it was set up. I need help really fast. The customer is expecting the corrected version of the slideshow in 2 days!

I realized when I wrote the note that details were being left out but I was almost afraid that I would scare people off, at least that is the way it seemed. I have been looking for an answer for days now and no one has answered. Thanks DJ.
I am running a PC on Microsoft Windows 7. I use Lightroom 4 upgraded to 4.4.
I am not a techy, I am a Grandmother that loves photography, and Lightroom, but for the life of me there are some parts of Lightroom that I just don’t understand.
I loaded and fixed up some pictures in Lightroom and then made a slide show from the pictures. The pictures are not mine, I am doing it for an organization. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3ms3xlWgbE . When I went back in to make some corrections I got an error message.
I put the exact error message into Google, which said :"Lightroom encountered an error when reading from its preview cache and needs to quit. Lightroom will attempt to fix this problem the next time it launches". It never did fix itself so I found several sites that said I needed to delete the preview cash. Now this is where, to me, it gets complicated: I didn’t know where the preview cashe was so I put it in my programs and files search and to my surprise it showed me a bunch of catalogs that I didn’t even know that I had. I selected the one with the most recent activity on it and deleted the preview cashe. It didn’t seem to do anything, no error message, nothing. When I went back into the catalog that had the pictures and slide show in it, it seemed to be gone.
I understand that it may have deleted it but it has never attempted to rebuild it and now all of those pictures and their changes seem to no longer be in Lightroom. I am afraid to do anything else for fear that I will really screw things up.
Now that I am calming down a bit, just from finally making contacting with someone else about this, I do realize that the pictures being missing is another problem. Can I discuss this with you later?
Is this forum the only way to talk to you? I was afraid that what ever that delete was that I hit deleted a bunch of other pictures.

I lost my .lrcat...how can I get it back?

The J: drive where I keep all my pix was full. I bought another bigger drive and formatted it as the F: drive.
I have an external ESATA box (JABOD) with a free slot. I swapped drives around. The J: drive and the F: drive are both in the ESATA box...the J: drive had previously been in the PC box. I copied everything from the J: drive to the F: drive. There are backup drives too, but they are not involved.
I have checked the J: drive and the data there seems intact. I also have the pix on the new F: drive too.
I thought I had done this correctly, but when I launch LR 2.4, it has no catalog. I have found a Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat file in C:\Users\[username]\Documents\Lightroom. It was created today and is 760KB. I think it is a "null" catalog...ie, one which is created when LR is first launched? What happened? Any thoughts about finding the lost catalog file?
I'll appreciate any help you guys/gals can give.

I have searched the entire C: drive. There are only 2 catalogs...one is the new one and there is another one in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Temp that is from Nov 2008. It's much larger (5,784KB), but is not the general catalog...it was a catalog of a specific set of pix. When I tried to use it, I got a message that it was from a previous version and had to be converted (or something...not sure about the exact word). I was afraid to let it do that.
I'm probably guilty of not setting up LR to do Catalog Backups? I thought it was doing them once a week, but not sure. Whatever, I can't find any backups! And the current setting for catalog backups is "never"! I'm sure I didn't have it set to never...
I don't understand why moving the J: drive to the ESATA box would cause LR to not find a .lrcat file?
FLASH: On a hunch, I looked on the J: drive for .lrcat files and found a bunch of them! There was a "set" of files from yesterday...an .lrcat, .lrcat.lock, and .lrcat.journal. These were all Lightroom 2 Catalog-2 files. There were other, older files too.
So now my question is how to proceed to make them visible to LR? Why can't it see them when the J: drive is located in an external ESATA box?
Do I just copy them to the C: drive?
Heck, I'll just try that and see...nope, that didn't bring the catalog back. I next also copied the previews folder over (it was HUGE...I thought LR discarded previews more than 30 days old?). Nope, that didn't "fix" it either.
I also noticed that the J: drive activity LED blinks about once a second as long as LR is up. Hmmm...
Once again, I appreciate any help and appologize for the rambling, "stream-of-consciousness" style of writing.

Lightroom catalog backup find missing file location- please help!

Hi,
Before I start, if anyone can answer this question I would be so grateful. I would cry!
Ok, so let me start.
Recently I cleared my whole entire mac and backed up everything on a hard drive. when I reinstalled lightroom on my clean mac, I also imported the catalog that I backed up. It all worked fine, and this post isn't about a lost catalog, or accidentally deleted photos.
So, what is hapenning is. When I imported my catalog I got an error message, for all the photos and folders. this:
So I found re-finding the folder, or finding the "missing file location" (which is so annoying because I wished Lightroom just backed up the pictures along with the catalog). But when I found the folder, only some photos showed up and some still displayed the exclamation mark.
Now I do have all the photos with the exclamation marks in folders on my backup hard drive, BUT they are all unedited raw versions. I honestly cannot go back and edit 2000 photos, especially after me having to clean all of the photos when my camera had over 30 spots of sensor dust on the photos. So those backup photos are what lightroom backed up, but I want to know how I can recover the photos in the lightroom catalog with the edits APPLIED.
May I PLEASEE get help on this. I am SO STUCK and do not want to mess up ANYTHING at all!
I would appreciate so much for ANY help! PLEASE!
Kind regards,
Josh

Please post on the Lightroom Forum.

Library module issues

I've lost "Catalog and Folders" in the Lightroom 4's Library Module. How do I get them back??

Right click on "Collection", "Public Servce Options" or the graphic mark at the bottom of where the other two were on the left side of Library module and reclick them so the checkmark shows up.

How to reattach iMusic/folders that have somehow detached?

Hi All,
After several months of flawless use of iTunes and loading CDs on WinXPpro, the iTunes suddenly lost catalog links to the folders on disk and numerous links and files got scrammbled. I have cleaned up most of the scramble and reloaded many CDs. However, the last question is there are numerous folders still sitting on disk downline from the iMusic folder. I have found no doc on how to have iTunes "connect" or "reconnect" to a folder physically still there. Is there any way to tell the iTunes catalog to import or link to an existing folder? Or a way to tell iTunes to refresh all of the directory tree below the iMusic folder?
Thanks in advance.

iTunes doesn't have a watch folder feature, but you can use this
Files > Add Folder > and browse to the top-level folder that holds all the music files, then add it.
Assuming this won't add duplicates, in which case, you'll have to choose individual missing folders.

Moving LR5 catalog (Irdata & Ircat) to a new hard drive and photos. Lost all meta data - How do I move meta data along with catalog?

I moved LR5 catalog (Irdata & Ircat) to a new hard drive and photos. Lost all meta data - How do I move meta data along with catalog?
The meta data for each image is missing.
I have over 2,000 images. I don't want to go back through each image and add meta data.
Is there some way to move everything?

No, do not re-import your images. I assume you can see the thumbnails in the library module, just cannot access the full images, right? If this is the case there should be an exclamation mark in the top right corner of every one of your pictures and you only have to tell LR where the images are now.
Click the exclamation mark of one of the images and a dialog window should pop-up, telling you that LR cannot find the file, but with an option to locate it. Press "Locate" and navigate to the folder on your new HD where the file is. If in the new external HD you kept the same folder structure that you had on the internal disk, LR will be able to find all your images and re-link them to the database without further intervention.

When importing from an old Lightroom 2 catalog into Lightroom 4 (also from Windows to Mac) I seem to have lost all the development history of my photos. Is there any way to retain that?

I finally managed to get through the process of moving files and catalog from Lightroom 2.7 on a PC to Lightroom 4 on my Mac. I think I did it all correctly and all my file and previews and some tagging seems to be there. Two things are lost
1 - Most importantly, the development history on my files. I can see the edited versions in the previews, but as soon as I click on it, I can see that I lose all the changes I had made before. When I look at Development history, it just says "Imported on...." I'd love to get this back. That is a ton of processing work just lost because I switched computers.
2 - The collection names seem to have come over, but they are all empty. This is also a lot of work lost, though not as important as #1
Is there any recourse?

For iTunes Help
Add artwork to songs and other items
Music and video you buy from the iTunes Store comes with its own artwork. You can add your own artwork to songs and other items in your library.
You can add many popular types of still image files, including JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and Photoshop. You must convert WAV files to another format before you can add artwork to them.
Album artwork for the currently playing item appears to the left of the progress bar. To view album artwork at a larger size in a separate window, click the artwork.
Hide
Add artwork to music and video
Do any of the following:
Add artwork to one item at a time:
Select an item in your iTunes library and choose File > Get Info.
Click Artwork and do one of the following:
Click Add, select an image file, and click Open.
Drag the art file to the artwork area.
To add artwork to another item, click Next or Previous.
Add the same artwork to multiple items: Select the items, choose File > Get Info, click Info, and drag an image file to the Artwork area.
Retrieve album artwork for songs in your library from the iTunes Store: Control-click the songs and choose Get Album Artwork from the pop-up menu.

Help.......I moved my LR5 catalog to a new hard drive and lost my COLLECTIONS

I moved my LR5 catalog to a new hard drive and lost my COLLECTIONS. In the collections i get the messageI then locate the file in the new drive :
i locate the file and receive this message
How can i get the Collection to redirect to the new location?? I have about a LOT of missing pics in Collections.
Thank you! Jamie

Thank your for responding.......
To clarify....I moved LIGHTROOM to a new hard drive....including 1) Working catalogs, 2) Working exports, and 3) Working Originals. I now know i did not follow correct procedure for "moving a catalog". I dragged it to the new hard drive. Yikes!!
(I was at Imaging last week and spoke to Julianne Kost, she recommended that i use the FIND link....but this gave me the same result as i am speaking about above.)
To Clarify......The Collections are listed. The target path to the images did not change when i moved to the new hard drive.
There is an exclamation point in the right hand corner of the images in each collection. When i click on the exclamation mark i get the message....."“JK_120214_7782.NEF” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" I then locate the file IN THE NEW current DRIVE...at which time i click on it and i receive the message.....
this file is associated with another photo in the catalog.... each file can only be associated with one photo. Then if i choose to show in library....it points to the image in the FOLDER tab...which is in fact where the image is located.
Up to this point, when i need one of these older collections i have had to recreate. i have manually gone to the original.....in the FOLDER tab, found the image and added to the Collections again. Then i go back and delete all the files with the ! ......a long and tedious task. I was hoping there was an easier way to recreate my "collections".
Initially i was going to just MOVE the entire library again ( the correct way) ....which i should've done i believe. Now i have imported more jobs and have created additional collections , so i'd love to find a short cut!
I hope this is a bit more clear!!
Thank you.

I recently had to wipe my hard drive thanks to a download happy teen. In that process I lost my LR4 catalogs I was able to redownload the program but the catalogs are not there and not all of those pictures are on my external hard drive because same said

In that process I lost my LR4 catalogs I was able to redownload the program but the catalogs are not there and not all of those pictures are on my external hard drive because same said teen decided they were going to borrow my external hard drive without telling me and "made room" on it. Is there a way to recover my catalogs? Please tell me there is because I was in the middle of working on a session when I had to wipe my drive and I would REALLY like to not have to go back and reshoot it. Any help would be wonderful!

It depends on how you wiped your drive. Depending on how you did it, only the directory was erased and the data can be found with drive recovery software. Some are free, although there is a small charge for most of them (~$30). You can usually download a trial version that shows if it will work and you have to pay to be able to save the found files. Use Google to search for the software. Different programs work differently and can find different things.
Good luck.
John

I D/L'd a trial version of LR 5 and lost all my catalog and collections in LR 4. What can I do to get them back?

Yesterday I D/L'd a trial version of LR 5.6 and during installation it seemed to be copying my catalog from my LR 4.4. Now nearly all of my catalog and all my collections in LR 4 have disappeared. What has happened to them andhow do I get them back. The original photos seem to still be available in the myphotos directory on the computer, but without any of my lightroom editing.

Thank you so much! I was freaking out that I had lost the whole
catalog and all my collections. It would have been good if Adobe
support had been able to point me in the right direction with this
advice. They basically shrugged their shoulders and said tough
luck! I am not impressed!
Thanks again, Anne
>I D/L'd a trial version of LR 5 and lost all my catalog and
>collections in LR 4. What can I do to get them back?
>
>created by <https://forums.adobe.com/people/dj_paige>dj_paige in
>Photoshop Lightroom -
><https://forums.adobe.com/message/6778009#6778009>View the full discussion
>

Lost Catalog

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