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Rob Liefveld
Rob Liefveld
Participant
June 18, 2019
Answered

How to recover my lost keywords in Bridge

  • June 18, 2019
  • 5 replies
  • 11552 views

All of a sudden my list of keywords has disappeared from the Keyword panel in Bridge and replaced by a standard set of Keywords. How do I get my old list of keywords back?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Lumigraphics

    Check in your user Library->Application Support->Adobe->Adobe Bridge 2019 folder to see if the custom keywords list is there. If its gone, you would need to restore from a backup.

    5 replies

    S
    Sem Carioca
    Participating Frequently
    March 12, 2021

    Well, I started using Adobe Bridge in 2020 on macOS Mojave and tagged thousands of photos with this application. As a result, I had created a very long keyword list with many sub- and sub-keywords. The whole thing took me months, it was quite some work.

     

    In the meantime, my version “Adobe Bridge 2020” had silently auto-updated to “Adobe Bridge 2021”.

     

    Only today I noticed that all my keywords had disappeared and were replaced by the standard keywords list:-(

     

    After some research on the internet, particularly in this community, I can see that there are innumerous threads all over the internet from users having the same problem.

     

    Come on Adobe. This is a severe bug! And in my opinion a shameful one as well.

     

    How is this possible? Isn’t Adobe one of the biggest software players?

     

    It’s completely unacceptable for me that a version update silently destroys my keyword list!

     

    Dear developers from Adobe:

     

    Aren’t you aware of this problem? Are you working on solving this issue?

      L
      Lumigraphics
      Legend
      March 12, 2021

      When you update, the ACC app asks if you want to migrate your preferneces. You have to say yes or your previous keywords won't be moved over.

      S
      Sem Carioca
      Participating Frequently
      March 12, 2021

      If this would be true it would be acceptable for me, but it didn't happen, not here. This might be the case on Windows but certainly not on macOS.

       

      As I said, my "Adobe Bridge" updated automatically in the background, without asking me anything!

        C
        CecileB.Urban
        Participant
        June 2, 2020

        Hi everybody, I've lost my keywords as well, I 've read this thread, I've found back an older version of my Abode Bridge Keywords.xml file, BUT, Bridge don't want to import it 😕😕 

        It drives me crazy ...Does anyone has a solution ? 

        Thank you soooo much in advance

          Stephen Marsh
          Community Expert
          Stephen MarshCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          June 2, 2020

          The Keywords panel import/export feature is designed to work with "simple" tab-delimited text files (as created by the export feature of Bridge or Lightroom). Once imported into Bridge, a "more-complex" XML text file is created by Bridge and stored in the appropriate location. Therefore it is not possible to import the XML file, this file can only be placed in the appropriate directory/folder as previously noted in the topic thread.


          https://prepression.blogspot.com/2016/11/bridge-restoring-lost-keyword-xml-file.html

          C
          CecileB.Urban
          Participant
          June 2, 2020

          Dear Stephen thank you very much!

          That's right, I've seen your message previoulsy, but I'am french speaking and I didin't get that it was answering my exact problem 😉

          It looks like a real geek deal, not sure I can run it the right way but i'll try !! ^^

          still...THANK YOU SO MUCH 

           

          robtmccann
          robtmccann
          Known Participant
          February 22, 2020

          Just realized I've lost all my years of keywording. I really dislike being stuck with Adobe products. The automatic feature of deleting all old versions was turned on when I did my last re-install and everything is gone. My own fault for not backing up everything before the automatic update kicked in. I am rapidly becoming ready for...

            L
            Lumigraphics
            Legend
            February 23, 2020

            You have to migrate your preferences from the older version. Read up to find the path to where your old keywords file is stored.

            Stephen Marsh
            Community Expert
            Stephen MarshCommunity Expert
            Community Expert
            June 18, 2019

            Sadly, this has come up many times in the past. There is a rather convoluted method to retrieve keywords from images and write them to a text file, then format the text file appropriately for importing back into Bridge. This is an 'easy' process, however, many users in this situation decide to rebuild from scratch rather than use this alternative. It probably depends on how many keywords one has and if they are flat hierarchical. Once going to the trouble of rebuilding the keywords list, I would then setup an explicit backup routine for this XML file and get in the habit of periodically performing a manual save/export from the keywords panel.

            Rob Liefveld
            Rob LiefveldAuthor
            Participant
            June 19, 2019

            Hi Stephen, I was able to restore the xml file from my back-up. Problem solved for now. It is still unclear to me how the file got lost and replaced by the standard keywords list. Is Adobe working on solving this issue?

            Regards, Rob

              L
              Lumigraphics
              Legend
              June 18, 2019

              Which operating system and what version of Bridge? Did you make any changes prior to this happening?

              Rob Liefveld
              Rob LiefveldAuthor
              Participant
              June 18, 2019

              Hi,

              MacOS Mojave 10.14.5.

              Bridge cc2019 version prior to today's update version 9.1.0.338.

              I did not make any changes prior to the disappearing of the keywords list.

              Can you help?

              Thanks

              L
              LumigraphicsCorrect answer
              Legend
              June 18, 2019

              Check in your user Library->Application Support->Adobe->Adobe Bridge 2019 folder to see if the custom keywords list is there. If its gone, you would need to restore from a backup.

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