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Inspiring
February 23, 2017
Question

finding current catalog backup file

  • February 23, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 2038 views

I am a LR 6 stand-alone version user and have used LR since 2012 on iMac .

I regularly do catalog backups.

Recently I looked in Catalog Settings - General,  and it states that my last back up was 2017-02-21. That's all good.

Then I clicked on Show, which presented a list of files showing backups going back to 2012, but the most recent folder is dated 2015-04-28.

Do I have a problem?

Where can i find my most recent backup folder?

I looked in Finder too. Same thing.

I will be replacing my Mac soon and will need to have the most recent catalog file.

Please help.

John Jackson

jrjackson@telus.net

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

dj_paige
Legend
February 23, 2017

Go to Catalog Settings and set Lightroom to make a backup every time Lightroom exits. Then when you close Lightroom and the backup dialog box appears, it will show you what folder the backups are being stored in.

Then you can set the backup frequency back to daily, weekly, monthly as you prefer.

JP Hess
Inspiring
February 23, 2017

You can also do that with the "next time Lightroom exits",  and you don't need to do any resetting of the backup option.

Legend
February 23, 2017

The backup catalogs for LR 6/CC2015 are stored as .zip files.

You need to decompress these files using your OS or other zip software before LR can read backup catalogs.

Legend
February 23, 2017

I just double checked... the "Show" button you described shows the location of the "Current catalog" only not the backup folder.

It just coincided that backups prior to 2015-4-28 were stored here too.

dj_paige's Instructions below should get you to the current backup folder location.

JP Hess
Inspiring
February 23, 2017

It sounds like your backup folder destination has changed. You can go to the catalog settings and change the backup frequency option to "the next time Lightroom exits" and then close Lightroom. On the screen  that shows take note of the folder where the backups are being written.

As a side note, you don't need a backup particularly when switching to a new computer. All you need to do is copy your current working catalog to the new computer and use it.