Problems updating Lightroom Catalog

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
August 20, 2025
4 replies
394 views

I have tried to update Lightroom Classic on my laptop. The last time I used LrC on my laptop was in 2018. When I try to open LrC I get the error message "Lightroom encountered problems when trying to update the format of the catalog file and cannot use this catalog in this version of Lightroom". Can someone please offer suggestions to fix the error?

App installs and updates

Correct answer AxelMatt

@juliem5000610 Since you unfortunately cannot give us any version information, all solutions here are guesswork.

But I have a suspicion.

As you wrote you're using Lightroom at least in 2018. So it must be a relatively old version.

A newer version had issues updating catalogs from older LR versions. This should have been resolved by now, but it might be the problem for you.

Please try the following steps:

Install LrC 13.2
https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/using/install-previous-version.html
Start LR and upgrade the appropriate catalog
Install the recent version of Lightroomo Classic
After starting LR upgrade the catalog again

AxelMatt

Correct answer

Community Expert

@juliem5000610 Since you unfortunately cannot give us any version information, all solutions here are guesswork.

But I have a suspicion.

As you wrote you're using Lightroom at least in 2018. So it must be a relatively old version.

A newer version had issues updating catalogs from older LR versions. This should have been resolved by now, but it might be the problem for you.

Please try the following steps:

Install LrC 13.2
https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/using/install-previous-version.html
Start LR and upgrade the appropriate catalog
Install the recent version of Lightroomo Classic
After starting LR upgrade the catalog again

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 8 - PureRAW 6 - Topaz Photo AI

DdeGannes

Community Expert

You need to provide some more specific info.

What version of Lightroom you were using in 2018?
What version you are trying to Upgrade to?

Actual numeric version numbers.

Lots of changes have taken place in the last 8 years.

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.0.1, PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

juliem5000610Author

Known Participant

Apologies for not providing that information. I have no idea what version of Lr it was, just that I last edited some images in it in 2018. I'm going to try uninstalling Lr and start afresh. I'm not concerned about losing files.

dj_paige

Legend

What version NUMBER of LrC are you using now? What version NUMBER of LrC were you using in 2018? (We need version NUMBERs and not words like "latest" or "up-to-date")