Missing catalog

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I decided today to delete some of my old Lightroom backups, to make space on my drive. I deleted them all except for the two most recent backups.

When I then tried to open Lightroom, I got a screen saying that it could not find the catalog. Looking in the default catalog location (C:/user/pictures etc, there is an .lrcat file dated today, but it is only a couple of megabytes, and just opens an empty catalog.

How can I find the missing catalog?

Thanks

Peter

Windows 11 pc, Lightroom 16.

GillPrince

Participating Frequently

Hi Peter, @Califdan2 gives very good advice here and it’s certainly the cause that I’d be most likely to suspect. Do you still have all of the files in your Trash/Recycle Bin? And have you been doing regular backups of your catalog every time Lightroom Classic exits?

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P

PeterOReillyAuthor

Known Participant

Yes, I think that was the answer. I do backups about once a week, or more frequently if I am doing a lot of editing.

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GillPrince

Participating Frequently

Do you still need help, or have you been able to sort it out now?

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Califdan2

Inspiring

Dollars to donuts you had been inadvertantly using one of your backup catalogs as your active catalog. This happens more often than one would imagine.

Here’s how you got there. At some time in the past (could have been years ago) for some reason you opened one of your backup catalogs. To do that you “extracted” the ‘lrcat’ and ‘lrcat-data’ files from the backup zip file but kept them inside the folder that contained the zip file. You were very happy with that catalog so you want on with your business.

Unfortunatly, there is a default setting in LrC preferences that says when you open LrC using an icon on your system, it should automatically open the last used catalog. In this case that was the one in the backup folder. This repeated each time you used LrC. So, when you looked at the list of all those bakcup folders, one of those old ones was actually the active catalog you have been using for quite some time and you deleted it.

Your best bet is to look into your Recycle Bin (Windows) or Trash (Mac) and restore all those backups you deleted. Have your OS put them back where they had been. Then open LrC and the catalog you had been using should open. Got to Catalog Settings and see where that catalog is located. It will probably be in a “Backups” folder. Close LrC, then move that entire folder out from under the Backups folder. Now using Finder/Explorer double click on the ‘.lrcat’ file you just moved to open that catalog.. Now go into your preferences and change the setting to “always open this catalog” so you don’t fall into that trap again.

Once you are using a catalog which is not in your backups folder you can go ahead and re-delete older unneeded backups.

BTW - I reccomend that you keep more than just the last two backups. Let me know if you want to know why and a methodology to ‘thin out’ the number of backups but still stay fairly well protected.

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