Lightroom Sync Stuck

[five.photos]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom 3.0 (cloudy, Desktop)

Operating System

1. macOS 10.15 Catalina

So, my Mac completely crashed the other day (buggy Catalina, but that's a different topic) and I had to erase my disk and reinstall the entire system from scratch. This meant I also had to reinstall Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Cloudy. That's all fine and I had sufficient backups to do so.

The problem, though, is that now Lightroom Cloudy is stuck syncing at 4,039 photos. I let the program run for two nights without any improvement.

Now, this article recommends to select all photos and either delete them or set a flag or star rating. I am willing to do this if it will solve my problem, but I'd like to get a second opinion from you experts first. My main concern is, won't deleting the photos also delete them from the cloud, too? Setting a flag or star rating is not my preferred option since these photos have stars and flags assigned and I don't want to mess this up.

Any advice here?

Thanks,
Patrick

 

[five.photos]

Let me add to my initial post that I basically would like to have all my photos synced and downloaded from the cloud to my Mac from scratch. I've already tried to delete the folder with the previously downloaded originals and the library, but this doesn't solve the problem. I always get back to the point described above.

 

[five.photos]

More information: The sync itself seems not to be the problem, really. With the standard settings in preferences, the sync completes just fine.

The problem starts when I select "Store a copy of all originals at the specified location" in Preferences > Local Storage. I think my originals are actually all saved to the hard disk, but Lightroom doesn't seem to be aware of that and starts over and over with the sync and never ends or gets stuck. I think it's a bug.

I've been chatting with Adobe for 2.5 hours already, but they don't seem to understand the issue/bug I'm having with my installation. It's my first time chatting with Adobe support and one of my worst support experiences so far.

Does anyone have the same problem?

 

[five.photos]

I know I'm having a conversation with myself here but we've finally found a solution.

The problem is, as it turns out, that Lightroom still doesn't play well with macOS Catalina. Apparently there are permission issues between Catalina and Lightroom for storing copies of cloud originals to an external hard drive (which was the case for me). Adobe's software still doesn't seem to be fully compatible with Catalina and produces a bug. @victoria, maybe you want to add this information to your helpful article.

The solution is surprisingly simple: On your Mac, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access and add Adobe Lightroom with the plus icon. This will solve this issue.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Sorry you were talking to yourself for a bit! That's an interesting observation, thanks. We've noted that security issue for Classic but hadn't particularly come across it for Cloudy.

One question - when you loaded Cloudy back onto the machine after reloading, did you copy the existing library back, or did you sign in and let it sync afresh?

 

[five.photos]

One question - when you loaded Cloudy back onto the machine after reloading, did you copy the existing library back, or did you sign in and let it sync afresh?

I didn't load the existing library back but rather let it sync from scratch again.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I didn't load the existing library back but rather let it sync from scratch again.

That's good, that avoids a whole heap of potential confusion.