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Import Catalogue import error in LrC

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RoyChPhotography

Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2022
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31
Lightroom Version Number
13
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
Hello friends and fellow photographers

I have two lightroom catalogues one is the master catalogue and the other is a smaller catalogue containing about 10000 images. I am trying to merge the smaller catalogue with the master catalogue. I have followed the method shown by the official Lightroom channel on YouTube, but I am getting an error I tried several times but all in vain.

As I use the File> Import from Another Catalogue menu of Lightroom Classic to import the smaller catalogue into the master catalogue, I get a pop-up with all the options. Once I choose the options and start importing, the progress bar freezes after about 1/10th of the whole. The program does not freeze and it appears as if the input process tries to import the images from the smaller catalogue. After around 30 minutes, I got a small error window informing me that photos could not be imported due to some unknown error. I found exactly 1500 photos are imported and the rest are not. Moreover, none of the collections of the smaller catalogue are imported. I am trying to import all the collections of the smaller catalogue including the photographs linked to those collections. Please note all the photographs in the smaller catalogue are connected to one collection or another.

Both the catalogues are on my internal HDD and the photos are on an external HDD.

Please note the smaller catalogue contains images which are not the same as in the master catalogue (mostly except about 300 photos). Both the master catalogue and the smaller catalogue are upgraded to the latest version of the Lightroom catalogue. The program is also updated to the latest version (13.3.1). I am enclosing the relevant screenshot with this thread for your reference.

Please help me out as it is extremely important for me to merge these two catalogues as soon as possible.

Thank you all in advance.
 

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Looks like there may be a corruption in the smaller catalog. You may be able to solve that by opening the smaller catalog, and then exporting all its images as a new catalog (do not include the negatives in the export dialog options). Then import this new catalog into your main catalog.
 
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RoyChPhotography said:
Thank you. Can the integrity check solve the problem? And what are negatives in this case?
Click to expand...
You could try if the integrity check fails and then Lightroom offers to repair, but simply exporting as a new catalog usually works better. The 'negatives' are the original images. If you check that, then Lightroom will copy all these images and place the copies inside the folder of the newly exported catalog. You don't want that because you don't need that.
 
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Johan Elzenga said:
You could try if the integrity check fails and then Lightroom offers to repair, but simply exporting as a new catalog usually works better. The 'negatives' are the original images. If you check that, then Lightroom will copy all these images and place the copies inside the folder of the newly exported catalog. You don't want that because you don't need that.
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for the clarification.
 
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To update, both the Master Catalogue and the smaller catalogue passed the integrity check, but I can still not import the smaller one in the master catalogue. I will try the last resort- exporting first and then importing.
 
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Johan Elzenga said:
That is another sign that something is wrong with that catalog, so leave it to finish and hope that this solves the problem.
Click to expand...
Thank you for replying. It took nearly 12 hours to complete the export process to a new catalogue. I am going to try to import this into the master catalogue.
Is it necessary to keep the newer version of the smaller catalogue on the disk after the successful import of the same into the master catalogue?
 
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RoyChPhotography said:
Thank you for replying. It took nearly 12 hours to complete the export process to a new catalogue. I am going to try to import this into the master catalogue.
Is it necessary to keep the newer version of the smaller catalogue on the disk after the successful import of the same into the master catalogue?
Click to expand...
No. If the import is successful, then you do not need the smaller catalog(s) anymore.
 
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Johan Elzenga said:
No. If the import is successful, then you do not need the smaller catalog(s) anymore.
Click to expand...
To update, I couldn't complete the import. It got stuck exactly at the same point and reported back the exact same error as the shared screenshot in my first post.
Both the smaller and master catalogues are optimized. I used the exact same import settings as I shared at the beginning.

Please let me know how to solve this problem.
 
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I don’t have a complete solution. It seems the catalog is corrupted more than the trick with exporting a new catalog could solve. The only possibility left is to write metadata to files for all the images in the smaller catalog, and then import these images in a normal image import into the main catalog. This will bring across edits and metadata, but not things like stacks, virtual copies, collections, etc. Not ideal, but better than nothing.
 
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Johan Elzenga said:
I don’t have a complete solution. It seems the catalog is corrupted more than the trick with exporting a new catalog could solve. The only possibility left is to write metadata to files for all the images in the smaller catalog, and then import these images in a normal image import into the main catalog. This will bring across edits and metadata, but not things like stacks, virtual copies, collections, etc. Not ideal, but better than nothing.
Click to expand...
As I have been using the smaller catalogue regularly, Lr should have given me some sort of indication earlier regarding this corruption. This is very weird and worrying.
 
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Come on! You react like Adobe did this on purpose. Of course it did not. But apparently there are situations where a catalog can be corrupted somehow, even though it passes the verification check. This is rare (I don’t think I have seen this before with a freshly exported catalog), but if that happens then Lightroom cannot warn you for this corruption because it doesn’t know about it.
 
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Johan Elzenga said:
Come on! You react like Adobe did this on purpose. Of course it did not. But apparently there are situations where a catalog can be corrupted somehow, even though it passes the verification check. This is rare (I don’t think I have seen this before with a freshly exported catalog), but if that happens then Lightroom cannot warn you for this corruption because it doesn’t know about it.
Click to expand...
Sadly your answer is more of a defence of Adobe (which is a bit irrelevant) rather than a solution to my problem (which is the kost important part). As a subscriber, I have right to complain about a shortcoming of a product. I never mentioned anything that means Adobe did it on purpose.
 
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I do not defend Adobe, but simply explain that Lightroom cannot tell you that a catalog is corrupted if it does not know that. Frustrating indeed, but such is life sometimes. I have no solution. I suggested everything that I know often solves problems like this, but unfortunately nothing worked. The only suggestion I have left is the one I already gave you: save metadata to files, then import the individual images rather than the catalog.
 
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