Sync woes: Would a new catalog help?

[akrabat]

Lightroom Version Number

9.4

Operating System

1. macOS 10.15 Catalina

I've been having sync issues for a while, so I recently completely reset the cloud side on Thursday, by:

1. Uninstalling Lr for iPhone from my iPhone XS.
2. Deleted the library on Lightroom Web by going to http://lightroom.adobe.com, clicking on the Lightroom icon, selecting "Account Info" and pressing "Delete Lightroom Library".
3. In Lightroom Classic (v9.4, Mac), going to Preferences -> Lightroom Sync and clicking "Delete All Synced Data".
4. In Lightroom Classic, deleting all photos from the "All Synced Photographs" collection.
5. In Lighroom Classic, I reset all my preferences by starting while holding shift+option while opening LrC.

I believe that as a result of this, the cloud side was now completely empty and pristine, ready to try again from scratch. (If I'm wrong and missed something, then let me know and I'll start all over again as a clean slate is a fundamental starting point for running down any problems.)

At this point, I only have Lightroom Classic which has a single catalog rather unimaginatively called "Master Catalog". This holds all my 80K photos, so isn't large by LrC standards.

To start again, I then:

1. Installed Lr for iPhone 5.4.2 on my iPhone XS.
2. Unpaused Syncing in Lightroom Classic (via the cloud icon in the top right next to "Web").

At this point I had a green checkmark on the cloud icon in Lightroom Classic and Lr for iPhone told me that I have no photos and I should import some.

On Friday, I was at the Severn Valley Railway and took some photos with both my XT-3 and iPhone (Apple Camera app). Back home, I imported my XT-3 RAF files into Lightroom Classic. I imported my iPhone photos into Lr for Mobile and waited for them to sync to the Cloud and I can see them on lightroom.adobe.com. Lightroom Classic correctly downloaded the iPhone photos and put them into the correct folder on my hard drive. After seeing the blue "syncing" badge on the cloud icon in LrC, it went back to the green checkmark.

Yesterday, I keyworded, labelled and added titles to this set of photos.

As a result, the blue "syncing" badge has reappeared on the LrC cloud icon as expected. In Preferences -> Lightroom Sync, the "Sync Activity" list shows "(11 uploading, 0 Downloading, 0 Pending)".

I made these keyword changes around 3pm yesterday. By 10pm when I went to bed, the blue "syncing" badge was stil there and the Preferences -> Lightroom Sync window showed the same 11 photos still uploading. I set my computer to say awake with the screen saver on all night and left it.

This morning, the same 11 photos are still uploading. I've attached a screenshot of the Preferences -> Lightroom Sync window.

I conclude that they are never going to upload.

I'm at a loss. I completely reset the cloud side. I completely reset Lightroom Classic's preferences, I completely reset Lr for iPhone. The only thing that I isn't new is the catalog.

I can hold Option in Preferences -> Lightroom Sync and then click "Rebuild Sync Data", but I've been doing that once every few days for the last few months and it's clearly not designed to be pressed every time I make a meta data change to photo!

What did I do wrong? What can I do to get this working?

Should I start again with a new catalog?

Thanks for reading this far! I hope I've provided enough information on all the steps I've done as I've done painstaking research searching the LQ forums and, Adode feedback and Adobe community forums reading lots and lots of posts on how others have solved this. Starting from scratch and simply importing brand new iPhone photos into LrC and adding a keywords and a title seems to the be simplest use-case and even that doesn't work for me. I appreciate that it works flawlessly for others; I'm looking for concrete actions I can take to have that experience too.

 

[AlanHaynes.com]

Akrabat: this is a common problem. If you go to Adobe's feedback forum, you'll see many posts about sync getting stuck. Here's a link to one of many.

Will starting over with a new catalog help? I don't know. I've tried exporting a catalog of problem images by using "Export as a new catalog" (it didn't help), but I've never tried starting over with a brand new catalog. I would like to hear if it works for you, though.

I suggest starting a brand new catalog and adding only the stuck images to that catalog. If those sync, add some more images to that catalog. If you do it piecemeal like this, and it gets stuck again, you won't have wasted as much time as if you tried to move all of your images into the new catalog at once.

Please post your results here. Thanks.

 

[Paul McFarlane]

I suggest starting a brand new catalog and adding only the stuck images to that catalog. If those sync, add some more images to that catalog. If you do it piecemeal like this, and it gets stuck again, you won't have wasted as much time as if you tried to move all of your images into the new catalog at once.

Interesting idea, but as you can only sync one catalog to the cloud, ultimately all photos will need to re-sync; as soon as you say the new catalog is the sync one, all cloud photos will delete.

I'm not convinced a new catalog will make any difference, Rebuild Sync Data should reset everything between Classic and the cloud.

It's true it's a common problem, and there's a fair bit of work going on to try and identify what are the causes. I'd suggest add it as a bug (to Adobe, see link at the top of the page) - on the basis the more that do and add as much detail as they can, the more help this will be for solutions to be found. Be sure to give maximum information (you mention you'd added Keywords, which of course don't sync, so the type of file(s) would be helpful too)

 

[akrabat]

I'm not convinced a new catalog will make any difference, Rebuild Sync Data should reset everything between Classic and the cloud.

I pressed "Rebuild Sync Data" around 9am this morning and it took my 11 files "uploading" down to 5. Those 5 were still "uploading" at 2pm, so I pressed it again and I've got a green checkmark finally.

Does "Rebuild Sync Data" ever lose any information? i.e. is it okay to press it once or twice a day to keep syncing going?

 

[akrabat]

It's true it's a common problem, and there's a fair bit of work going on to try and identify what are the causes. I'd suggest add it as a bug (to Adobe, see link at the top of the page) - on the basis the more that do and add as much detail as they can, the more help this will be for solutions to be found.

Done. I 'm a nobody though, so I don't suppose it'll make any difference.

 

[Paul McFarlane]

Rebuild Sync Data clears the local cache of images from the cloud and processes them again. So no, not a great idea to keep doing it as the more images you have in the cloud, the longer it takes.

Good that you logged it, it might seem insignificant but both the weight of numbers of people with the issue and the collective view that can be taken to try and establish patterns helps. Adobe do take it seriously, there was a recent fix for a DNG issue in sync made.

I hope it behaves itself now!

 

[clee01l]

Done. I 'm a nobody though, so I don't suppose it'll make any difference.

You are somebody to some one.

While individuals may not have much impact, the weight of many individuals will cause Adobe to put more priority on Bug reports

That "Rebuild Sync Data" was not an option in earlier versions of LrC. I'm not sure when (or where) it was added, I believe as a direct result of earlier sync issues getting stuck and the bug reports submitted.

 

[akrabat]

Some further notes for anyone who finds this thread.

I uninstalled Lightroom Classic 9.4 and installed 9.3. In the day or so since then no matter what I tried, I have had no images stuck with an "Uploading" status in Sync Activity.

Then, I put 9.4 back in order to create a report as asked for by an Adobe employee. I added a rating to one iPhone image that was downloaded from Lr for iPhone and it's stuck with an "Uploading" status in Sync Activity.

 

[clee01l]

Some further notes for anyone who finds this thread.

I uninstalled Lightroom Classic 9.4 and installed 9.3. In the day or so since then no matter what I tried, I have had no images stuck with an "Uploading" status in Sync Activity.

Then, I put 9.4 back in order to create a report as asked for by an Adobe employee. I added a rating to one iPhone image that was downloaded from Lr for iPhone and it's stuck with an "Uploading" status in Sync Activity.

You might go back to the bug report that you accessed earlier and Include these details in your comments. It is important that a sync bug appears to have been introduced in 9.4 that was not present in 9.3. This will help the Adobe developers to identify the source of your problem.

The Adobe sync process involves processes (program code) on the client end (LrC v9.3 or v9.4) and the Server computer version. Since the sync issue happens in v9.4 and not in v9.3 it would suggest the server code is not the problem. Client server apps can be tricky to debug.

 

[akrabat]

You might go back to the bug report that you accessed earlier and Include these details in your comments. It is important that a sync bug appears to have been introduced in 9.4 that was not present in 9.3. This will help the Adobe developers to identify the source of your problem.

Yep, I did indeed update the bug report too. I'm currently waiting for them to let me know how to private message them to share my LrSyncDiagnostic.zip file.

 

[akrabat]

Have to admit that I was suprised that an Adobe employee replied to the feeback. I may have to revise my views on being insignicant to a big corporation...