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J
joseph motto
Inspiring
May 25, 2017
Question

How to recover lost keywords?

  • May 25, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 2661 views

In the process of uninstalling and reinstalling LR 6 my keywords all disappeared. I had a very large number and have no idea if it is possible to recover them or not and, if so, how to go about it.

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    1 reply

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    May 25, 2017

    Uninstalling/reinstalling would not cause your keywords to disappear. So perhaps you did something else after you re-installed. Did you? Please tell us what you did after you re-installed. Please tell us lots and lots and lots of details about what you did after you re-installed. Leave nothing out. For example, did you open a new catalog and import all your photos?

    J
    joseph mottoAuthor
    Inspiring
    May 25, 2017

    It is very difficult for me to tell you everything I did as I found the reinstall confusing (see my last posting). Ultimately I was able to bring up my Pictures files in LR 6 but it only consisted of about 40% of the images that I  currently have in LR. It appeared that this represented my catalog of several years ago as the only backup I had in my desktop was from that time; since then I have always backed up to an external drive. I did note, however, that I did have a limited number of keywords. I then went to my latest backup of my catalog dated 4/30/17, copied it, and pasted it into my desktop main drive. From there LR 6 finally opened with all of my images but absolutely no keywords at all.

    F. McLion
    Community Expert
    F. McLionCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 26, 2017

    Reinstalling did not touch your latest and most current catalog. You need to open this catalog and not some backup.

    Search for *.lrcat files to find the catalog you used before the reinstall.

    Why did you reinstall in the first place?

    If you had LR set to automatically save to xmp, then the keywords are stored in the catalog as well as to the xmp sidecar files. You need to have either one to recover the keywords.

    However, the focus is to find and use the catalog you used before removing and reinstalling.

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