Keyword import?

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planowoman

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I have been using Lightroom for 8+ years and I just managed to accidentally delete all my keywords. The keywords were on around 100,000 images and I am just devastated.

I was importing some images to my catalog that someone had already keyworded. But of course, everyone keywords a little differently, so I wanted to delete their keywords so I could use my already vast list. Well somehow, I ended up clicking on the main folders for my keywords and deleting them before realizing what I had done. I have a backup from a few days ago that still has the keywords in it. In doing this have I stripped all of my images of their keywords or just taken them out of my list in Lightroom?

Is there a way to import the keywords again from the backup? What else can I do? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. I am just beside myself. Thanks!
 
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Yes, You are going to use your latest back up catalog that does not include the mistake (I had to go back 6 months to fix mine) You will only need to do something a little more recent.
There are two approaches that can work. I'll describe them both and you can decide which is most appropriate for your situation.
  1. First Approach:
    1. If you have a very recent backup you can replace the existing Master with it and then redo all of the changes that have been made since that catalog was created.
    2. Before you delete your existing Master you might want to use the Export as another Catalog also of those images that are not in the Backup that is to become the new Master. This will save you some time and you won't need to Sync Folders to reimport these files.
    3. For files that are deleted since the last good backup, you can find these using the Find Missing Files function.
  2. Second Approach:
    1. Identify all of the images in the Master catalog that have missing keywords. (Works best if there are only a few)
    2. Assign them a special keyword like "*I was an idiot"
    3. Create a comma separated list of these filenames
    4. Open the Last good backup as a separate catalog.
      1. Using the Filter bar create a filter searching on file name and place the comma separated list of these filenames in the search field.
      2. This will generate a grid view of all of the image files in the backup catalog that have keywords that you need.
      3. Select these images and use the Export as Catalog function to generate a catalog file to Import into the Master catalog
    5. Open the Master catalog and use the Import from another catalog function to import these into the Master catalog. Since the files are already present, you will simply update the keywords for those already there. If there are developers changes that make this "Import from another catalog" images unique, you could also generate a virtual copy and need to decide which develop history to make master copy and whether to delete the Virtual copy.
 
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clee01l said:
Yes, You are going to use your latest back up catalog that does not include the mistake (I had to go back 6 months to fix mine) You will only need to do something a little more recent.
There are two approaches that can work. I'll describe them both and you can decide which is most appropriate for your situation.
  1. First Approach:
    1. If you have a very recent backup you can replace the existing Master with it and then redo all of the changes that have been made since that catalog was created.
    2. Before you delete your existing Master you might want to use the Export as another Catalog also of those images that are not in the Backup that is to become the new Master. This will save you some time and you won't need to Sync Folders to reimport these files.
    3. For files that are deleted since the last good backup, you can find these using the Find Missing Files function.
  2. Second Approach:
    1. Identify all of the images in the Master catalog that have missing keywords. (Works best if there are only a few)
    2. Assign them a special keyword like "*I was an idiot"
    3. Create a comma separated list of these filenames
    4. Open the Last good backup as a separate catalog.
      1. Using the Filter bar create a filter searching on file name and place the comma separated list of these filenames in the search field.
      2. This will generate a grid view of all of the image files in the backup catalog that have keywords that you need.
      3. Select these images and use the Export as Catalog function to generate a catalog file to Import into the Master catalog
    5. Open the Master catalog and use the Import from another catalog function to import these into the Master catalog. Since the files are already present, you will simply update the keywords for those already there. If there are developers changes that make this "Import from another catalog" images unique, you could also generate a virtual copy and need to decide which develop history to make master copy and whether to delete the Virtual copy.
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Thank you! Your response gave me the courage to move forward and everything has been restored!
 
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