P: Deleting a keyword from the keyword list doesn't remove it from auto complete

[Tony123456]

If someone has already reported this I apologize. I did try to search for it but couldn't find anything with the keywords I was using.

If I enter a misspelled keyword accidentally it continues to show up in "Autocomplete" even though I delete it from the Keyword List.

I've never had this happen before. I recently upgraded to the 9.0 release.

My specific example of this behavior is when I go through to keyword basketball photos one of my keywords is Dribble. In the past I could type in dri and hit enter and it would autocomplete Dribble. I accidentally entered dri9 (the 9 is above the right side of the I key) and when I hit RightArrow to move to the next photo it entered dri9 into the keyword list. On the next dribbling photo when I typed dri it showed dri9 as the top option in autocomplete. I went into the keyword list and deleted the dri9 keyword. That removed it from the photo and from the keyword list but it still shows up in autocomplete.

I tried to see if I could remove it by entering dri9 in a different photo. This added it back to the keyword list. I went into the list and deleted the dri9 keyword again. That removed it from the photo and autocomplete again but then when I tried to enter dribble I noticed that I now had two instances of dri9 in the autocomplete popup. I continued to try exiting lightroom and backing up/optimizing the catalog and entering and deleting the keyword. Nothing worked although I now have four instances of dri9 in the autocomplete popup. There is also another keyword that it has happened on although I can't remember what it is now.

One other thing I did try using the Filter Keywords box in the keywords list and can't find dri9 anywhere.

[Lauca]

I've tried 3 methods for solving this; none have worked:
  3. deleted helper.lrdata file associated with catalog

This is strange because helper.lradata is where the suggested list is kept by LR, so removing it suppress the suggested list.
When I discovered this bug, I even fixed the suggested list by manually removing the bad entry in the helper.lradata (what the remove keyword process forget to do), so I didn't loose other keyword suggestions.

[hotbaba]

How did you manually remove the bad entry? I am on a Mac and there is no program to edit that file.

[johnrellis]

The Helper.lrdata is a Mac "package" that contains a SQLite database file. The format of that database is undocumented, and changing it requires technical proficiency with databases and one of several different applications that can read and write SQLite databases.  Unlike editing the main catalog database file, editing this database file is much lower risk, since it's safe to delete the file entirely;

[hotbaba]

Thanks, John, but I have been using LR for many years and it seems like deleting the helper.lrdata completely is taking a hammer to the problem, when all one is trying to do is remove maybe 5-10% of the keywords that are misspelled. The fact the LR has this error (I wouldn't give it the satisfaction of calling it a "bug"), it should be fixed.

[johnrellis]

Fully agree.

[Lauca]

As john said, I used a special tool and my knowledge of databases to fix it (and I'm on Windows).
Agreed to your remark about deleting the whole database (that's why I tried to remove only the bad record).

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Updates to Lightroom Classic, Camera Raw, and the Lightroom Ecosystem were released yesterday and contain a fix for this issue.  Please install the appropriate update and see if it solves this problem. You can read more about the updates here.

Thank you for your patience. 

[Chris280]

Works fine for me so far. Thanks.

[Spiketrain]

Hi - Well it's 23rd March 2020 and I'm running 9.2 on a Mac and this problem still exists..... am I doing something wrong?

[Lauca]

I confirm that in my LR 9.2 on Windows the problem has been fixed.

[Spiketrain]

Excellent! - So happy! - Now just waiting for the Apple side of things to help me out... can't be far away

[johnrellis]

Can you provide a precise step-by-step for reproducing the problem?  (I and others have confirmed that the bug appears fixed in our LR 9.2 installations, but that doesn't mean there aren't still problems lurking.)

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Thanks for the reply! Hm, not sure how I added a keyword with a space, actually I don't see the space, but when I hit the space bar the problem keyword always appears.

I did just find it in the keyword list and deleted it, that seems to have worked, thanks again.