P: Catalog fails update from 10.4 to 11.0

Try using an older catalogue from a recent backup.  That worked for me.  You will only use the last few edits.  On the last update to Lightroom Adobe said they had fixed the issue so make sure you are using the very latest version.  11.4.1 is what I'm using now. 

I am helping an elderly student upgrade her LR Classic catalog to 11.0. We have been on the phone with Adobe 4 times with a 5th pending appointment and they can't seem to solve this catalog upgrade issue. The message is the same Cannot Convert Catalog. I need help getting to someone in senior tech who can tell us what is going on. I don't want to put this student through more stress. The anxieity added to a recent hospitalizaiton. Adobe has always been difficult to communicate with but this is really a brick wall. Barbara

@stevermoore 

Thanks for the suggestions, BUT, at this point, I have happily deleted ALL the old iterations of the 10.4 catalog ... "Out, damn Spot, OUT!"

My husband said that if there are any missing virtual copies, he will do them again. After all, this has gone on for weeks, and weeks, and weeks!

It is too bad that the adobe people didn't think to suggest this to me!  Ahhh well, life has its trials and tribulations.

At least, if someone else has an issue, there is a blueprint for them.  The critical thing is to export all the virtual copies as a separate mini catalog.

Wow what a time consuming way to get your catalogue updated, well done.  I had planned the same sort of venture to get my catalogue done. The new version 11.0.1 updates the old catalogue with no problems.  You may want to try that on your old catalogue just to make sure you have everything. 

I ran into the same issue with my husband's catalog. I went through all the same fix-it steps, including renaming the catalog, spending untold hours on the phone with Adobe "support," and finally insisting I be passed to the next level up.

When that didn't work a very patient gentleman from India sent it to the "back room" at Adobe for repair. The catalog came back repaired, but no one tried to back it up, and as soon as I opened the repaired catalog and tried to back it up for safety, it refused to do so. Back to square one.

This has been gong on since November 6th, perhaps even earlier.

I finally did my own repair by reverting back to 10.4, exporting folders and groups of folders as mini catalogs, backing each of them up. I found that doing the virtual copies and their parents was a good way to go for them in a separate process by first moving them to a Virtual Copies folder, then exporting them, backing up, etc., etc.

I was fortunate to be able to work off two computers, one with v.11, the other with 10.4.

Once the folders were copied over to the v. 11 computer, I opened each catalog (dozens and dozens) and upgraded them to v.11. Then, I imported the mini catalogs bit by bit, and each time, backed up the new master catalog and as a safety precaution, literally copied the lrcat file to another drive. If someting didn't work, I could easily revert, go back to the 10.4 computer, and export the recalcitrant folder(s) again as mini catalogs, somthing I had to do several times.

I created a second catalog for my husband with older photographs, so that if something goes wrong, I will be dealing with smaller numbers.

As of this morning, my husband now has two working catalogs, representing two different external hard drives. He is good to go, and we keep our fingers crossed, no thanks to Adobe.

I am hoping these steps might help someone else down the line.

 You likely have an unrelated catalog error if 11.0.1 does not allow you to upgrade. I would recommend your contacting Adobe Customer Care and ask them for catalog repair assistence on your 10.4 catalog. 
 https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/contact.html 

I'm sorry Rick,

my primary post seems to be deleted. I posted on26th of October: "Windows LR 11 classic is not able to convert the LR 10 catalog to the new format of LR 11. I only get the error message "Beim Aktualisieren des Formats der Katalogdatei in Lightroom ist ein Problem aufgetreten. Dieser Katalog kann nicht mit dieser Lightroom-Version verwendet werden."

You have got my catalog and told me, that you were able to convert the catalog. Later you posted, that the converted catalogs have been delivered to ther owners (not to me unfortunately).

Now I tried to convert my v10-catalog with version 11.0.1. The conversion still does not work, I get the same error message as with version 11.0.0. So I'm still stuck with version 10.4. Is there a plan to solve my problem?

Bruno

I can confirm that a previous catalogue that wouldn't update to the new version 11 now will upgrade to the new version following the update to Lightroom 11.0.1  .......

I have received an upgraded catalogue back from Adobe, instead of a repaired old catalogue and that all worked ok.  Thank you.  It was frustrating but didn't stop me working as the old version worked ok.   Can't see why people are posting on here that is has stopped their work.