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henningmet
Known Participant
March 20, 2024
Answered

Metadata disappears after input

  • March 20, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 865 views

Recently, I have discovered a strange behaviour of Lightroom when entering metadata.
I am in the library view/grid view and have selected several images. If I then write something in the metadata (e.g. caption), it is displayed briefly and then disappears again. Only when I manually trigger "Read metadata from file" is it displayed again.

"Selected photos" is ticked and the little eye symbol next to the metadata field.

I didn't have this behaviour until a few weeks ago. What am I doing wrong?

 

Windows 11, Lightroom Classic 13.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer johnrellis

    1.  Try deleting the Helper.lrdata folder:

     

    a) Do Catalog Settings > General > Show to open Finder / File Explorer on the current catalog folder.
    b) Exit LR.
    c) In that folder, delete the folder "<catalog> Helper.lrdata".
    d) Restart LR, and it will rebuild the folder.

     

    The Helper.lrdata folder caches information about metadata, keywords, folders, collections, 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 a fair number of 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 20, 2024

    1.  Try deleting the Helper.lrdata folder:

     

    a) Do Catalog Settings > General > Show to open Finder / File Explorer on the current catalog folder.
    b) Exit LR.
    c) In that folder, delete the folder "<catalog> Helper.lrdata".
    d) Restart LR, and it will rebuild the folder.

     

    The Helper.lrdata folder caches information about metadata, keywords, folders, collections, 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 a fair number of 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.

      H
      henningmetAuthor
      Known Participant
      March 20, 2024

      Hi John,

      Thank you for your advice. I had already tried to reset LR's preferences and that didn't work.

      But then I tried your first possible solution and let Lightroom rebuild the  "<catalog> Helper.lrdata"-file. That fixed the problem. Learnt something new again. Thanks for that, I really appreciate that!

       

      I am long-time Lightroom user (since Lightroom 3) and use it heavily almost every day but there is always something new to discover ...

        johnrellis
        johnrellis
        Legend
        March 21, 2024

        Glad you got it resolved.

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