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Montalbo
Montalbo
Participant
April 27, 2026
Question

Lightroom Classic - IPTC and EXIF Image Data Disappears (spinning wheel)

  • April 27, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 39 views

I have used Lightroom Classic for nearly 20 years and have a large catalog (about 70,000 images).  As you would expect, I’ve also spent countless hours organizing the photos, editing and assigning keywords.

A few months ago, I suddenly began to experience a new problem.  Suddenly, the “Exif and IPTC” fields on the right side of my screen were all blank (no keywords visible, no location info, no copyright info, etc.).  The small “spinning wheel” could be seen but it never stopped spinning.

I searched these forums extensively and also many other sites.  There were recommendations that included resetting preferences, deleting the metadata helper file, and more.  Ultimately, nothing has fixed the problem.

I note that deleting the metadata helper.db file does help for a short period.  In order words, if I delete it and then start Lightroom Classic, the IPTC and EXIF data reappears, however, after anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes, it disappears again and the spinning wheel returns.

In addition, even when the data is visible, there are now problems with updating that data.  I often update “sublocation” “city” “state” “country / region” and “ISO country code” for a number of images, and even save to the file… and yet, when I return to the files after a few minutes, those updates have reverted to whatever was there before.

This has made it so that I’m now reluctant to take photos and add photos… which is quite the opposite of the purpose of the software and quite disheartening.

Running Lightroom Classic 15.2.1 on Mac OS 26.3.1

Appreciate your help!

    2 replies

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    April 27, 2026

    I have a few ideas, but these are more guesswork than anything that I’m 100% sure will fix the problem.

    1. File->Optimize Catalog
    2. Create a brand new catalog and then import your existing catalog into the brand new catalog
    Montalbo
    MontalboAuthor
    Participant
    April 27, 2026

    I’ve been using Lightroom Classic for nearly 20 years.  My database contains about 70,000 images (some videos) and I’ve spent countless hours adding keywords, organizing and naming files, adding edits, ratings, etc.

    About 3 months ago, while I was keyboarding new images I’d loaded in, I noticed that all of the IPTC and EXIF data that usually displays down the right (keywords, file name, dimensions, artist info, GPs, creator info, sublimation, city, state, country / region, ISO country code,...) disappeared.  When I looked more closely, there was a spinning wheel of sorts.

    This continued indefinitely and I realized it wasn’t going to correct itself.

    At that point, I began to search for solutions on these forums and elsewhere.  I tried all of the various recommendations, including going back to an earlier catalog, deleting the preferences files, deleting the metadatahelper.db file, and more…   and every time the problem returned.

    The only one of the proposed solutions that helped even a little was deleting the metadatahelper.db file.  When I do that, the EXIF and IPTC data returns temporarily  (and then the problem returns after anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes).

    This has been very frustrating and quite disheartening.  It’s made it so that all the work put in to assign specific info to files is useless and it’s made me reticent to take and add new photos.

    In addition, even when the EXIF and IPTC data is visible for a short time after I delete the metadatahelper.db file, sometimes updates I make to fields like sublimation and city don’t save to the files.  Even if I force save, sometimes I come back to the files and they’ve reverted to the prior information.

    I really hope that someone can help me fix this for good so I can go back to making use of this program and the catalog / system I’ve established over 20 years!

    I’m running Lightroom Classic 15.2.1 on a MacBook Pro with Mac OS 26.3.1

    Thank you all.

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