Everything (well, almost) is gone.

[paul6001]

In an effort to speed up a painfully slow Mac, I did a mass deletion. Unfortunately, some good went with the bad. 

After some monkeying around, this is the situation:

-A have a recent back-up of the catalog (v11.lrcat) and all the pictures on an external disc.

-I have a "My Lightroom Photos" folder on my desktop with all pictures. There is no catalog, as there normally would be.

-When I open up Lightroom, it's completely empty. No catalog, no photos, BUT the file structure is intact.

How do I move forward? I searched the web for answers to what seems like a common peoblem, but got no help. I could restore everything from the external disc and manually handle the 2 percent of photos that weren't backed up. I could copy the catalog, put it in the "My Lightroom Photos" folder and restore it that way, I could do something else. But I don't know how to do anything. I hate to ask you pros to dumb yourself down but you're dealing with a new level of technical incompetence.

Please help this old lady across the street. It's not worth much but you'll have my undying gratitude.

[Jill_C]

It sounds like you have a functional Lightroom Catalog on the external disk. You can copy that to the internal hard disk then open that catalog from within Lightroom. If you haven't changed the file structure of your images, the Lightroom Catalog will be able to find them.

[Per Berntsen]

-When I open up Lightroom, it's completely empty. No catalog, no photos, BUT the file structure is intact.

By @paul6001

Lightroom cannot open without a catalog, so you do have a catalog. And the folder structure is part of the catalog.

But your photos are most likely missing (deleted?), so you will have to copy them from your external disk to the location where Lightroom expects to find them.

Please post a screenshot of the entire Lightroom window in Library (grid) view, with the Folders panel visible and expanded, and with one folder selected.

If you don't know how to make a screenshot, see https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/mac.html

Please do not attach the screenshot, use the Insert Photos button in the toolbar.

[paul6001]

I am in the process of importing the pix for the fifth time, all using slightly different methods. I lose. the history every time. EVERY TIME! I give up. If I ever need to shake something odd, I'll jusy go bac and start from the original file. I usually keep an unmolested original.

[paul6001]

Unless maybe (this is a wildly optimistic thought coming from me) you can't see the history until everything has been imported. Maybe attaching the history is the last step in the import process. Pure fantasy but wouldn't it be nice if it were true?

[dj_paige]

Importing will not produce history. You have to use the backup of the catalog file, and NO IMPORTING of the photos. Just reconnect the photos, if necessary.

Repeating just because this is incredibly important in this situation:

NO IMPORTING
NO IMPORTING

NO IMPORTING

NO IMPORTING

I hope this is clear.

[dj_paige]

In an effort to speed up a painfully slow Mac...

What actions are slow? Please be specific and detailed. Deleting files usually doesn't make a difference to speed, unless you have a disk that is almost 100% full.