Library shows incorrect number of photos

[nikoleflowers]

Last night, I imported new photos to LRC. I was prompted to update my version, so I did that after I imported my photos. When it restarted, my library showed 54 photos when there should have been ~950. I checked their location on my harddrive, and they were still there, so I knew it was a Lightroom glitch. I spent over an figuring out how to reopen an old backup, reimporting my new files, and changing my default catalog. I'm relatively new at LRC and I haven't had to do this before. Once I did all of that, I reenabled sync on my catalog. Many of the photos from the cloud re-downloaded. No biggie - I just deleted the duplicates. When I was going through to make sure everything was there, I realized all of my collections were mixed up. The photos in each collection were still together, but the name was switched with another collection's name. At this point, I reverted my version to 13.3.1, but this issue persists. When I change them to their proper names, others seem to glitch and switch names. I am at a loss. I am at my wit's end with this app right now and I am about to delete everything and start from scratch. 

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

This sounds like the following happened. After upgrading the catalog, Lightroom lost the connection to it. That happens sometimes for no apparent reason. As a result, Lightroom created a new catalog. You did not notice this right away, so you imported 54 photos. There are known sync bugs, so syncing that new catalog created new problems, like the collections that did not have the correct name. Reverting to 13.3.1 will not change anything, because the problem is in your new catalog, not in the Lightroom app itself.

What you need to do is find your old catalog (upgrading creates a copy, so the old catalog should still be there) and upgrade it again, or find that upgraded catalog that Lightroom could not find itself. Double click it to launch Lightroom with it. 

[nikoleflowers]

Thanks, Johan! 

Here's what I did: 

I felt like the renaming glitch was only glitching one or two at a time instead of the majority, so I decided to rename them...slowly. I would rename one and then wait a bit to see if it stuck, and then renamed another. It's been fine since. I would have followed your advice but I had done all of this before your response was posted! If it happens again, I will go back to this post and try what you said. Thank you again!

[nikoleflowers]

Hi, Johan!

I updated Lightroom (again) today and the same issue happened.

In order of occurence:

- Lightroom Classic was fine and working as expected. I had imported photos a few days ago, but I was only editing photos today.

- I did noticed that Lightroom Mobile had incorrectly named collections, and I deleted my synced data via Lightroom Mobile to reset this. 

- I was prompted to restart LRC after this, because it needed to reset my sync status. I restarted LRC and continued to edit photos. 

- I saw that LRC had an update, so I installed this and relaunched. 

- I was prompted to restart after the update, once again to reset my sync status. 

- After restarting, the collections were mixed up and the number of photos was incorrect. 

- I referred back to your response, and it unfortunately hasn't helped. 

Could this possibly be an issue with Lightroom Mobile? Do you have any other suggestions? 

Thanks again. I wasn't expecting to go through this again!

[nikoleflowers]

Every time I open Lightroom Classic, I'm prompted to restart it to reset the sync status. While the pop-up is blocking my view, I can see that the collections are correct. When I restart it, they are completely messed up. What could this be? 

[JohanElzenga]

There are indeed reports of sync problems, and deleting sync data is not recommended for the new sync engine. Apparently it creates more problems than it solves. I would pause sync and wait for an update.

[nikoleflowers]

Thank you! I will hold tight.