Catalog got overwritten by an older version

[valerieo94521099]

Hello!

My Lightroom started acting weird a week ago, and today I finally thought I solved the problem, but apparently, that's not the case.

After editing for about 6 hours, I noticed Lightroom was running slow and some photos in the catalog were greyed out, I decided to quit lightroom and then reopen it. Lightroom froze. I had to force quit it (Mac using Ventura 13.2.1.). After I reopened Lightroom, the catalog looked like it did 6 hours ago, when I opened it in the morning. All of my edits, ratings and also imports I did since then were gone (but the "real" files are still on my external hard drive). I initially thought that Lightroom opened some old catalog (not sure why it would, but you never know), but I looked for a newer catalog in the folder where I keep them, and nothing. The newest catalog was updated the minute I reopened Lightroom, and all other catalog / back-up files are even older than the one that got opened.

Is there any way to get my edits back?

[Sameer K]

I'll help you figure this out. Where do you keep your Lightroom Catalog? On the internal drive or an external drive?

In Lightroom, go to File > Open Recent > check the list of recent catalogs & open the correct one from here.

You can list all the catalogs on your computer using macOS Finder search & type in .lrcat & then arrange the results by modified date to find the recent catalog you were working on.

Let me know how it goes. Thanks!
Sameer K

[valerieo94521099]

Hi Sameer, thank you a lot.

I keep my Lightroom Catalog on my internal drive. It only shows the Catalog that's already open (the older one) when I go to "Open recent". 

When I look for .lrcat files, the most recent one is also the one that's already open, all the other .lrcat files are even older. 😞

[JohanElzenga]

When Lightroom opens a catalog, it will change the 'Modified' date and time of the catalog file, even if you do not do anything in Lightroom. Just opening it is enough. That means that the most recently 'modified' catalog you see, is actually the most recently opened catalog. So that could still be an older catalog than the one you were working on when the crash occurred, but did not open again since.

[Theresa J]

Since you have a Mac are you using Time Machine to backup your computer? If so, you can retrieve your catalog from just before it got corrupted.