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Unable to merge Catalog's

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JediMaster

New Member
Joined
Dec 5, 2018
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9
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
Classic CC V8.0
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.13 High Sierra
For several years I have taken an external hard drive traveling and upon my return, merged it with my main catalog using File>Import from another catalog. No problems.

This year however, I encountered the 'Catalog must be upgraded' message and the whole process has failed to work since.
Having agreed to the upgrade I am presented with the 'Import from catalog xxx' after which the import begins but soon displays the message 'Lightroom could not import this catalog because of an unknown error'

Does anyone have a fix for this?

Thanks
 
On the computer where you created the catalogue, try selecting everything and doing a File > Export as Catalog - don't included negatives or previews. This should create a new catalogue which is cleaner.

If there's still the same problem, there are workarounds. For now, just make sure you take backups of the travel catalogue and the main catalogue, and back up your images.

The first message is because on one of your computers LR is a different version from the other, so get them both up to date.
 
On the computer where you created the catalogue, try selecting everything and doing a File > Export as Catalog - don't included negatives or previews. This should create a new catalogue which is cleaner.

I have used the Import from another catalogue command but never exported. What is the difference between not including negs or previews to including them. If you don't include then is the link still maintained?
 
In this case I want to eliminate the possibility that the error is a problem reading the previews, as well as avoiding using disc space unnecessarily by exporting the originals.
 
On the computer where you created the catalogue, try selecting everything and doing a File > Export as Catalog - don't included negatives or previews. This should create a new catalogue which is cleaner.

If there's still the same problem, there are workarounds. For now, just make sure you take backups of the travel catalogue and the main catalogue, and back up your images.

The first message is because on one of your computers LR is a different version from the other, so get them both up to date.

Hi John,

Thanks for your input.

I'm not sure I fully understand. When you say select 'everything', are you referring to what's highlighted in the screenshot?


Screen Shot 2018-12-12 at   14.49.15.png
'
 
One more question to throw into the mix - which LR version is the travel computer running?
 
One more question to throw into the mix - which LR version is the travel computer running?
I don't know. At the time the fault arose they were both running the same version. They are the two computers registered to my Adobe Cloud account. I do recall a message telling me the catalog needed to be updated and so (foolishly it would seem) I did. I was too busy to pursue the problem at time and now I'm a bit vague as to the sequence of events.
 
So did you get everything transferred ok in the end? If it happens again, it would be worth checking in more detail, as stuff that's current shouldn't require an upgrade.
 
Ok. Does the catalog still open ok on the laptop? Let's start there, and check you're running 8.1 on there too.
 
Hi Victoria,
Yes, I can open the catalogs individually. My laptop is running 8.1. It's actually two laptops that I use. My main Catalog is on an external hard drive that gets left at home along with my MacBook Pro. When I travel I take a 2nd external hard drive along with a MacBook Air. The two Macbooks are the two devices registered to my Adobe account and so both are kept up-to-date.
 
Ok. Let's try something. Rather than navigating to the catalog on the portable drive when you use Import from Another Catalog, what happens if you copy the portable catalog over to the home laptop's internal drive and try to import from there? I'm wondering about weird permissions issues, or LR simply having trouble importing from another drive.
 
I copied the catalog to the desktop then tried 'Import from new catalog' but got the same error messages.
 
Hmmmm. Weirder and weirder. If you agree, I'd like to do a bit of troubleshooting on your catalogs here, to see if I can reproduce the error. If I can, I can get a bug in (and maybe find a workaround in the meantime). I'd just need the lrcat files of the two catalogs, no previews. If you're ok with that, you can use www.wetransfer.com to send to [email protected]
 
Well the good news or the bad news is it worked fine here, so the merged one is on its way back to you! You'd just need to copy the photos to the main drive using Finder and right-click on the folders in LR to Update Folder Location / Find Missing Folder.

Which I guess leaves us 2 suspects:
1. Something corrupted in the previews, which I obviously didn't have.
2. A problem copying the files, assuming you had the import set to copy the photos to a new location instead of adding them at the existing location.
 
Great news! Thank you. I'll follow your instructions and get this finalised.

FYI...The import was set to import to an existing location (2018).
 
So it was copying the photos from the portable drive to an existing folder? Maybe there was some kind of conflict there then.

If you hit this again, try setting it to "add at existing location" so the photos stay on the portable drive, then copy and relink them manually. That may be enough to avoid it.
 
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