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backyardprod
Inspiring
March 6, 2023
Answered

Erratic syncing of metadata between images in catalog

  • March 6, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 402 views

I'm on Lightroom Classic 12.2 on a windows 10 machine. I have about 120,000 images in my catalog. I noticed in one of the recent releases that the display of keywords in an image can be slow - up to 5 seconds and the word "working..." appears in the screen until the keywords are displayed. I can live with that, although it is annoying.

What is more problematic is that if I select an image that has keywords, caption and description (and wait until all are displayed) and then select another image to copy the metadata to, the sync screen appears, the fields have the right information in them and are clicked, but when I click sync nothing happens. The recipient file is still empty, there is no keyword flag - the sync did not occur.

This doesn't happen every time. LR copies metadata OK when I first start the app, and if I restart it, it then works again (albeit with the delay). I'm a stock photographer and so copying metadata is a very regular thing I do in LR.

Steve

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer johnrellis

    A couple of troubleshooting steps that might help:

     

    1. Do Catalog Settings > General > Show to open File Explorer on the current catalog folder. Exit LR. In that folder, delete the folder "<catalog> Helper.lrdata". Restart LR, and it will rebuild the folder.

     

    The Helper.lrdata folder caches information about keywords, folders, and other things to speed the performance of LR and it can sometimes get corrupted.  In recent versions, LR has used it more heavily to improve the speed of displaying metadata, and there have been many bugs with it.

     

    2. Try resetting LR's preferences:
    https://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/


    LR sometimes soils its preferences file, and resetting it can fix all sorts of wonky behavior. That article explains how to restore the old preferences if resetting doesn't help.

    1 reply

    johnrellis
    johnrellisCorrect answer
    Legend
    March 6, 2023

    A couple of troubleshooting steps that might help:

     

    1. Do Catalog Settings > General > Show to open File Explorer on the current catalog folder. Exit LR. In that folder, delete the folder "<catalog> Helper.lrdata". Restart LR, and it will rebuild the folder.

     

    The Helper.lrdata folder caches information about keywords, folders, and other things to speed the performance of LR and it can sometimes get corrupted.  In recent versions, LR has used it more heavily to improve the speed of displaying metadata, and there have been many bugs with it.

     

    2. Try resetting LR's preferences:
    https://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/


    LR sometimes soils its preferences file, and resetting it can fix all sorts of wonky behavior. That article explains how to restore the old preferences if resetting doesn't help.

      B
      backyardprodAuthor
      Inspiring
      March 6, 2023

      Great - I deleted the Helper.lrdata folder and restarted Lightroom and the keywords appeared immediately when I moved to a file. And the syncing between images appears to be OK as well. Thanks!

        B
        backyardprodAuthor
        Inspiring
        March 6, 2023

        I spoke a little too quickly - the delay in the keywords appearing is back but syncing appears to still be OK. I might have to reset the preferences - will give it a bit of time to see if it starts to fail on the syncing.

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