I Renamed my Photo's but now my "Photo's is Missing"

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Trojan Fan

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Hello everybody:

I am a new poster to LRF's because I have recently gotten myself sideways with LR2. I am hoping somebody can help me get through my current situation, which centers around a "photo is missing" message in LR2.

I keep all my images and catalog on an external hard drive (G:). In early December I renamed all my pictures for folder "2''9". After that time, whenever I launched LR2 everything was fine. On Christmas Eve I imported roughly 3''+ images and left LR on overnight. In the morning I discovered Santa Claus brought a new 32" LG HDTV that I will be using as my monitor. After shutting down my pc, connecting the new monitor, and re-launching LR I cannot "see" any of the images I imported the previous evening, and in fact, all the images in the folder named "2''9" are all grayed out with the "Photo is missing" ("The photo xxx.cr2 could not be used because the original file could not be found"). When I relaunched LR2 the first time after connecting the new monitor I didn't have my external hard drive turned on and had not "backed up" my catalog for a couple weeks. So now I have two problems: first, I can't "see" any of the thumbnail images in the 2''9 folder (even though I can "see" all the other folders / images from previous years that are stored on the same external hard drive (i.e., 2''8, 2''7, etc); second, the 3''+ images I imported on Christmas eve are not in the catalog I currently have open. The physical images are indeed on the external hard drive ... they are just not showing up in LR2.

My monitor profile is not corrupt, since I can see pictures on all the other folders on the external drive. To be sure, I also created a new monitor profile.

I have done some searching on the net but haven't been successful isolating my problem(s). Can somebody please help me get straightened out? Sorry for the long post.
 
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Sounds like you have opened a back up catalog.
Look for files with a .lrcat extension and open the last used one. That should work.
 
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Thank you for the quick response.

I have tried using catalog files ... the most recent ones and older ones. Still can't view the files, however.

After posting my question I realized something: After I renamed the file names in LR2 I never "backed up" my catalog. So, my actual file names have the new names when I look at them in windows explorer, but when I enter LR2 all the file names are the original file names (i.e., "Img_'5'3.CR2", etc).

Is there a way out of this?
 
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[quote author=Trojan Fan link=topic=8737.msg5881'#msg5881' date=1261931945]
.After posting my question I realized something: After I renamed the file names in LR2 I never "backed up" my catalog. So, my actual file names have the new names when I look at them in windows explorer, but when I enter LR2 all the file names are the original file names (i.e., "Img_'5'3.CR2", etc).[/quote]Did you really use LR to rename your files or did you use Windows Explorer? If you renamed outside of LR then LR knows nothing about the new names.
If the name change occured outside of Lightroom, then you need to name the image files back to the old names outside of lightroom. Lightroom only stores pointers to the file locations If the pointer points to a file name that does not exist in that location, then LR gets confused. Any Move, Delete or naming operations on image files managed by LR needs to be done with LR and not with the OS file management tools..
 
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Where's your catalog usually stored? Could it be on your external drive that wasn't turned on initially?
 
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Clee'1: Yes, the renaming was done in LR2, it was not done with windows explorer.

Victoria: The catalog is usually stored/backed up on the G:\ drive and you are correct, it was not initially turned on when I connected the new monitor. That's when I realized I never "backed up" the catalog since renaming the files several weeks earlier.

So basically, the most recent "backed up" catalog has the original file names from the camera (Img_'5'3.CR2, for example), but the actual image names that are physically still intact on the external hard drive are all renamed.

What should I do?

Thank you for your help.
 
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Still not clear here, where is your working catalog?? C or G drive?
 
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So if you open the catalog on the G drive, are the renamed photos correct in that catalog? Is it perhaps just opening the wrong catalog?
 
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