I want to move my Lightroom classic .lrcat file but NOT the pictures.

[wake6]

Hi,

I have been curating my recently deceased father-in-law's digital photographs. I (foolishly, I think) put all the photos on an external drive but created a catalogue where the .lrcat file and the helper and preview folders are on my laptop's C: drive. I am using Windows 10.

I think I should have set it all up on the external drive and then for backups I could have just cloned the whole drive to another external drive. But I have done quite a lot of work on the pictures so I don't want to start from scratch.

I am loathe to simply move the .lrcat file and the helper and preview files on to the external drive as I suspect they may not be able to then locate the files?
I have searched around these forums and the wider Internet and can find a lot about moving the pictures but nothing about moving the .lrcat file.
Any advice gratefully received. Thank you.

[GoldingD · Accepted solution]

see  "Copy or move a catalog" in:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/create-catalogs.html

and/or:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/find-move-rename-catalog/

[wake6]

Thank you.
Taking a deep breath and giving it a go...

[GoldingD]

And, I suspect, you will need this link:

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

[wake6]

Thank you. It has all gone smoothly. Thank you.

[GoldingD]

And in hindsite:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-move-lightroom-to-new-computer/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T2wCK9jDd4