Keywords are missing

[mjacchina]

I'm on a PC with Windows 10 running Bridge CC(2017).  This afternoon I opened Bridge only to discover my keyword panel has reverted to the default keywords. I know the keywords are still there because when I select an image I can see the assigned keywords and they show up in italics in my keyword panel. My keyword panel was fine this morning when I was using Bridge. Unfortunately all my smart collections that are based on keywords no longer work either.

I closed Bridge, shut down my computer, opened Bridge, purged the cache... nothing has helped.

I need my keyword tree back! Help!

[Stephen Marsh · Accepted solution]

Some options here:

Prepression: Bridge – Restoring a Lost Keyword XML File

[mjacchina]

Thank you Stephen. I realized after I submitted this question I had a backup of my keyword file in CrashPlan. I was able to restore the keyword XML file which restored the keyword panel. However doing this did not restore my smart collections, many of which are based on keywords. I was also not able to do a new search based on keywords.

I found I had to go back and "touch" each folder before my smart collections and any keyword searches would work. This has been a long and tedious process because I have folders inside of folders and just opening the top level folder doesn't work. I have to open the folders of the files that are actually keyworded.

Also I found that after I had the keywords "reconnected" I couldn't keyword some types of files, specifically .png. I had to clear the caches of those folders specifically before I could keyword without receiving an error message.

Hopefully this will not happen again. It took way too much time to fix. I wish I knew exactly how my keyword file reverted to its default so I can avoid this in the future.

[Stephen Marsh]

Glad you managed to get your Keyword XML file back!

Smart collections rely on having the cache working correctly, or additionally using option to search for “non-indexed” (uncached) files.

Your Bridge view settings can be set to “show items from subfolders” which may help with ensuring that your cache is rebuilt.

[mjacchina]

"show items in subfolders" worked very well. It took awhile to generate but everything seems to be back in order. I even found some random files that had escaped my keywording so thanks for the good advice.

Can you point me towards any other articles for effectively managing my cache? Clearly I have some learning to do.

[Stephen Marsh]

The cache is one of those geeky topics that get little attention, except for bad attention from users that don’t like or understand it.

You can try here for some links to more info:

Bridge thumbnail cache shared between multiple PCs