Issue accessing catalogue

[powerjake]

I have subscribed to creative cloud for some years. I have thousands of images stored in an external hard drive. When I saved them I was using Lightroom Classic CC as it was then called.

I had a break of 18m or so from using it.

In the interim the software has obviously changed to Lightroom Classic.

When I connected with the updated software it located the catalog on the external drive and said the library needed to be upgraded. However after this it has just given me a screen dialog saying that this version of classic cannot work with the library.

I put this on the forum some time ago and nothing has helped. The last response I received was to suggest my hard drive may be corrupted but it seems to be absolutely fine and I can use the finder to see all the contents and navigate to other folders and images.

I have never ever done anything to the lightroom files with any programme other than lightroom.

I'm running MacOS 12.3.1 on a Macbook Pro.

My assumption is that the newer version of Lightrom has been developed in such a way that there is an inherent conflict trying to access an older library that hadn't been incrementally upgraded at regular intervals when Lightroom was changed.

If that is the case it would be great if somebody could just tell me that.

As far as I can see Adobe no longer provides access to an actual live human being with the knowledge to answer queries like this. Much as I appreciate the community responses it is slow, clunky and previously failed to come up with a solution.  There is a contact us button but nothing happens when I click it so I am trying again to see if anyone has an answer before I start hundreds of hours work from scratch once again. See attached image of the screen dialog....and yes I looked at the tech note which didn't help.

[GoldingD]

Check the installed applications on your MAC. Do you have more than one version of LrC installed?

[Rob_Cullen]

Is it possible your catalog is only in iCloud?  A catalog there would be inaccessible to LrC.

(just a thought from a Windows guy )

[powerjake]

If only….Nope, it’s on my LaCie 2TB external hard drive. Thanks for the thought though.

[SeanMcCormack]

Only speculation here but... 

In the Creative Cloud app, go to Lightroom Classic line and click the 3 dots on the right. Choose Other Versions and see if an older version will update it? Really the current versions should update it though. 

[Rob_Cullen]

And a hint that might help in the 'Catalog FAQ'-

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/catalog-faq-lightroom.html