Images disappear from catalog LR Classic 10.4

[Brian Smale]

Weird problem:  Last week I did a large shoot (~5,000 raw images), and successfully imported everything as normal.  I went through all images, and created galleries for my client, no problem so far.  This week, as i am preparing the final versions i see that several hundred images are no longer in my catalog.  They all still exist on my hard drive, so i'm ok that way, but i can't seem to locate the catalog images. 

I've tried syncing, searching for missing photos, and re-importing, but can't do it because LR thinks the images are already in the catalog (I've searched for some images within the 'All Photos' but nothing is found).  I even attempted to re-import by unchecking the 'don't import suspected duplicates' box, but it won't even allow that (thumbnails are still greyed out). 

This isn't a normal case of a link from original photo to the catalog being broken... it's a real mystery to me.  I've been on LR since version 1, so have plenty of troubleshooting experience, but this one has me stumped.    It's too late to trash the folder and start over, since I'm deep in to ratings and adjustments on a large number of images (and i'm not even sure it that would work in this case anyway).  

I can muddle through this job, since i have a long deadline,  and i can access the images using Bridge, but I'm worried that this could happen again when i don't have time to mess around.   Has this happened to anyone else? Were you able to fix it?

Thanks!

Brian

LR Classic 10.4 / Mac OS 10.14.6

[DdeGannes]

Check and make sure you have opened the correct Catalog. You cannot search for images across multiple Catalogs. The Catalog file has an extension .lrcat (dot LRCAT).

[dj_paige]

Search in Lightroom Classic, by file name, by applying all four of these steps in sequence:

1.  Click on "All Photographs"
2.  Turn off Filters (Ctrl-L once or twice)
3.  Expand all stacks (Photo->Stacking->Expand All Stacks)
4.  Use the Filter bar to search for one of these photo by file name

Do you find the photos this way?

ADDING: at least once in this forum, a user accidentally stacked a lot of photos together but didn't realize he had done that (didn't even know about stacking) and then could not find the photos. Which is why Expand All Stacks is a necessary step in the search.

[Brian Smale]

My friend, you are a genius.   Or maybe i'm an idiot.    Either way, it worked! 

I must have accidentally hit 'stack' on a bunch of selected images.   I frequently switch back and forth between Loupe and Grid view, and I must have hit Cmd-G (instead of just G) at some point.    As far as i can tell, there is no indication of stacking when you are in Grid view.  Also, i wonder why a search won't turn up an image that is within a stack.

Anyway, thanks very much for your help!

Brian

[dj_paige]

My friend, you are a genius.  

Well, only on Wednesdays.

Look at the top left image in this screen capture at https://jkost.com/blog/2019/02/stacking-photographs-in-lightroom-classic.html, you will see vertical lines at the left and right edge of the thumbnail box, these are stacking indicators. The number 5 in the little rectangle on the top left of the thumbnail is the other stacking indicator, indicating that 5 images are stacked.