Lost my Keyword Tree after re-install

Forum|Forum|2 days ago
April 3, 2026
3 replies
23 views

My last Windows 10 desktop gave up the ghost rather suddenly, and I moved to a Windows 11 HP desktop replacement. Of course I had to re-install my favourite programmes and in the process the file “Adobe Bridge Keywords.xml” from my old system was overwritten by a new file with just a few American suggestions for Keywords (eg: Places/New York, Events/Thanksgiving etc.) appearing on Bridge when I opened it. I kick myself for not making a better System Backup.
Today I started the job of giving my photos Keywords again by creating the beginning of a Keyword tree in the Keywords panel. My new Keyword list appeared in the Adobe Bridge Keywords.xml file. Before linking the photos to the Keywords I opened a folder dated 2004 in Bridge and found that the Keyword Panel was populated with the original Keywords that applied to these photos, although all in Italic Text . This was a surprise to me as I had thought the keyword designations for these photos had been lost when the “Adobe Bridge Keywords.xml” file was overwritten. I was able to successfully do a “Find” search for a family member that produced hundreds of correctly indentified photos, so the original information is clearly stored elsewhere in the software. That’s a relief!

My question now is; Can I recover the original keywords linked to their photos and get them to appear in plain text as they used to in the Keywords Panel?
I notice that if I right-click the Italics Keywords that have appeared in the Keywords Panel there is an option “Make Persistent”. Should I try using that option?
I’m using Bridge 16.0.2.23

S

smiffy47Author

Known Participant

Thanks to Erik Bloodaxe and Stephen Marsh for their advice. I had already started with Erik’s idea before Stephen’s contribution arrived, so I continued with Erik’s plan which has been very helpful. I can’t therefore comment on the alternative message.
What I have been doing is doing a series of “Finds” on Keywords I know I have used in the past. Bridge then displays all the photos it can find. I then select them all and check the Keywords Panel and Rt Click any Keywords that have appeared in Italics and selected “Make Persistent” to re-establish them as permenant. A bit slow going, but so much quicker than dealing with each photo separatly, so many thanks Erik

Erik Bloodaxe

Legend

Glad to hear that you are making some progress. Don’t forget to backup this time!

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

I wrote a blogpost on this here:

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2016/11/bridge-restoring-lost-keyword-xml-file.html

There are options listed in both ExifTool and custom Adobe scripts to batch export out all keywords from source files, rather than doing this manually for each keyword in each image.

Erik Bloodaxe

Legend

I assume that you have no way of recovering the Adobe Bridge Keywords.xml file from your old computer even by extracting the hard drive and attempting recovery procedures? Yes, always create a backup!

Failing that, the keywords which you applied to images in the past are saved withing the images so are not totally lost as you have seen. Once you select any file with assigned keywords, those keywords will appear italicised under the heading Other Keywords because they are no longer in your (lost) keywords list. So yes, Make Persistent is the way forward then drag them into appropriate locations within the Keyword Panel to recreate your keywords list. You can easily export that list by clicking on the menu next to the word Keywords in the panel header and choosing Export. Save to a convenient location then the file can be imported again in the future should things go wrong. I am in the habit of saving everytime I make any change to my keywords list.

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