Upgrade to Lightroom Classic Nov 2019 did not find my catalog

[DebS]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic version 8.4.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

I updated Lightroom Classic today (Nov 23) and got the message about needing to update the catalog. I clicked okay and LR updated but it does not see any catalog! I cannot navigate to my hard drive or find any photos. Now I probably complicated matters because I found a Lightroom Queen instruction on re-naming my catalog. I had developed a catalog with a bunch of -2-2-2, so I renamed to Catalog.lrcat and Catalog Previews.lrdata. I tried reverting to the old names but it seems since it did not find the catalogs when I updated it is not finding the catalog now. Any help?

 

[Jim Wilde]

Can you post a screenshot from File Explorer of the contents of the folder which contains your catalogs? Need to check that you renamed correctly...

 

[DebS]

Yes - it is attached. The top file (2019-11-15 1847) was my most recent backup, but I found the full catalog in a folder named 2016-01-25 1948. Which I assume means it has been around since 2016. I renamed it to Catalog, and when it didn't work I reverted the name and tried again but still there are no photos/folders in launched Lightroom

 

[DebS]

Oh, and there were two Previews.lrdata folders. The one I renamed was dated 2018, the one still showing with old name is from 2016. Thanks for your help - so appreciated!

 

[Jim Wilde]

Inside the folder with is called "Catalog" (which is selected in your screenshot) there is a sub-folder called "Catalog.lrcat". Can you select that so that we can see the contents of that sub-folder?

 

[DebS]

 

[Jim Wilde]

Ok, we seem to have a bit of a mess to clean up here. For a start, you've renamed the wrong thing.....it looks like you renamed a sub-folder to "Catalog.lrcat", rather than renaming the catalog file. But that's probably not an issue, because if I'm reading your earlier post correctly, the catalog backup you were trying to rename was from 2016, which really isn't the one you should be trying to use (as it won't have been updated since 2016!).

What we need to establish is what catalog were you using before you did the upgrade. You seem to be working within the Backups folder, which really isn't where the master catalog file should be....so I'm wondering if some time in the past you opened a catalog backup file and have been using it ever since? Does that ring a bell? I see there's a Lightroom backup taken on November 15th, and then there's a separate backup presumably taken by you, not by Lightroom, taken today.

I would think the best thing to do would be for you to click on the topmost Lightroom folder in File Explorer, and with that selected type ".lrcat" (without the quotes) into the Search box at the top right. That will search the entire Lightroom folder and sub-folders for catalogs and will list them in the main window. When the search has finished take another screenshot of the results and post back here. Hopefully we'll be able to figure out which is the catalog we should be focusing on.

 

[DebS]

Thank you again. This is the top level Lightroom folder under "Pictures" on my internal hard drive. Right below the Lightroom folder is the folder "Lightroom Catalog Backup Nov-23-19" that is a copy of the Lightroom Backup folder I made today prior to making any changes. It is 30GB, the same size as the Lightroom Backups folder I am working from (just in case...). This .lrcat search from the Lightroom folder came up with 81,630 items... so you are only looking at the top of the search. Hope this is helpful.

 

[DebS]

I am fairly certain my current catalog is LR4-2-2-2.lrcat. And I'm not sure why the master was within a file named 2016-01-25 1948 inside the backup folder. It seems to be indeed all messed up. But it was working before I tried to upgrade....

 

[Jim Wilde]

OK, we can try to work with that to see what we get. With Lightroom not active, in File Explorer, select that "Catalog.lrcat" sub-folder (as per the screenshot in your post #6), then in the main window double-click on that "Catalog LR4-2-2-2.lrcat" file, which should launch Lightroom with that catalog open. If that's the original pre-LR9 catalog you'll get the option to upgrade it, but hopefully that's actually the upgraded catalog in which case it will open immediately. If it does open correctly, spend some time checking to make sure that really is the latest catalog and then let me know. There are some things we need to change to hopefully prevent this happening again.

 

[DebS]

Thanks again for your help! I double clicked on the catalog you referenced, and it gave me the option to upgrade. I hit upgrade and LR has now opened to where I stopped the last time, and I am so relieved to see everything there as need be. I would so appreciate your help to get my file structure figured out so, as you say, this doesn't happen in the future! Here is a screenshot of what I have now, with the new catalog LR4-2-2-2-2.lrcat. Thanks again!

 

[Jim Wilde]

The things that I would be doing in your situation:

1. With Lightroom closed I would rename that sub-folder that you inadvertently named "Catalog.lrcat", and name it something meaningful such as "My Lightroom Catalogs".

2. Then with Lightroom still closed I would drag that newly renamed folder upwards and drop it on the "Lightroom" folder. That effectively moves the catalog folder out of the Backups folder, it doesn't belong in that Backups folder.

3. Then I would move the entire Backups folder to a different drive....there's no point having both the catalog and its backups on the same drive unless you separately backup them both up.

When you've done that, I'd also suggest renaming the catalog file to make it clear which is the current version 9 catalog....so rename "Catalog LR4-2-2-2-2.lrcat" to something like "LR Classic9 Catalog.lrcat". You'd also need to rename the associated previews and helper folders, so that "Catalog LR4-2-2-2-2 Previews.lrdata" becomes "LR Classic9 Catalog Previews.lrdata" and "Catalog LR4-2-2-2-2 Helper.lrdata" becomes "LR Classic9 Catalog Helper.lrdata".

Then you can start Lightroom again, but because we've changed the name you'll again need to double-click on the new "LR Classic9 Catalog.lrcat" in the Lightroom>My Lightroom Catalogs folder. We may need to adjust the startup preferences, so post a screenshot of the Lightroom Preferences>General tab.

When you exit Lightroom and want to take a catalog backup, you'll need to change the location for the backups, pointing the backup to the "Backups" folder on the new drive.

Let me know if any of that isn't clear.

 

[DebS]

Thanks - I am going to do all of that, but first I need to process some photos I should have done yesterday lol. I will let you know what happens when I move these around, hopefully at the end of today's processing. Thanks again!

 

[DebS]

Hi Jim, I have renamed and moved things as suggested. I was able to restart by double clicking the newly named catalog, and here is the preferences tab. I do believe I need to change the catalog in the "when starting up use this catalog" drop down, but waiting for instructions from you. Thanks so much!

 

[Jim Wilde]

Yes you do. Use the drop-down arrow to the right and you should see the name of the current catalog appear in the list, select that and that should fix things for future launches.

 

[DebS]

Thanks again for your fantastic help! I did exactly that before I shut down last night, and today LR launched with catalog intact. You took me from no catalog to functioning catalog, and taught me a lot about something I should have already known but it was always "another time" lol. Anyway, I understand that to change where I store my backups (external drive) I do that the next time I close LR. And hopefully my last question - my catalog has over 100,000 images. Is there a time that I should start a new catalog? I notice that LR has a lot of "not responding" messages, and I have to wait for it to respond again. Is this because my catalog is too large, or my computer lacks capacity? My computer was well equipped when I ordered it with Intel® Core™ i7 and 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz - 4 DIMMs, but I suspect it is out of date now. Any ideas? Thanks so much!

 

[Hal P Anderson]

There are people with over half a million images in a catalogue that have good response. If LR is sluggish, it isn't due to the size of the catalogue.