Lightroom Classic upgrade to 13.0.1 (on macOS Sonoma) causes folders to be entirely lost to LR

[crosstown68]

Upon upgrading to Lightroom Classic 13.0.1 (on macOS Sonoma 14.1.1, from the latest prior version of LRC) and clicking yes to upgrade the catalog, files from about the last year have gone missing. They are not shown in the Lightroom Classic app anywhere that I can find. No greyed-out files or folders and Missing Photographs (I do have some) stop at the same date as all the upgrade-dropped photos.

I believe I did nothing but open the app and see that the Grid View showed older images - with recent photos missing. The actual HEIC images are in the same Pictures sub-folders as worked the day before. Is there a way to connect to an unseen folder? 

[Bojan Živković]

You posted to the wrong forum. I will move it to the right place.

[crosstown68]

Thanks for redirecting it. New to the forum, to forums. 

[GoldingD]

Check for a different v12 catalog. Sometimes at upgrade, LrC fouls up on upgrading the correct catalog.

[crosstown68]

Thanks GoldingD for the reply, but what do I do with the v12 catalog - which I found with Finder, not with LRC? Classic upgraded the catalog to the v13 as apparently the v12 is not compatible with the v13 upgrade. Does one want to revert to a pre-upgrade Classic app version as a fix for the moment and hopefully reconnect with the v12 catalog? Is that possible and or desirable, and can it be accomplished with a Time Machine restore of the LRC application - or some other way?

I'm a bit frustrated as this  feels  like an Adobe issue, not user created (although I would expect others to have the same issue if it really is a bug); and there have been no other replies than yours suggesting a fix. 

[Rob_Cullen · Accepted solution]

You may have had several old catalogs in your system (even more than one that included the -12 version suffix).

As suggested by @GoldingD  the Catalog you upgraded to v13 may have been the wrong one, or not the 'latest' catalog you used in LrC v12.

Use Mac Finder to locate any, and all, Catalog files in your system  (Catalog name.LRCAT)

[Double-click] each to open (and upgrade) with LrC v13 until you find the one with your latest imports included.

(No need to revert to LrC v12.)

If you have been creating regular Catalog Backups- Look for a ZIP file with your last Catalog Backup- that might contain all your imported photos.

Restore photos from backup catalog

[crosstown68]

Solved! Great to get a full and simple fix. In spite of phrasing questions all sorts of ways in the forum and basic Google searches, I (inexplicably?) didn't come across anything actually helpful, so you saved the day for me. Thank you Rob Cullen!

It appears as if LrC is acting differently on the older v12 catalog when the app upgrades the catalog than when I double click to upgrade the same catalog/file for LrC to use. When I used the double clicked v12 file to open LrC all (previously missing) files were present.

So I closed and reopened LrC to make sure all was well, and it was back to my original problem of missing files. I realized I of course needed to rename my double clicked file from  “-2” version (the system had named it), to the original name, so LrC would use it when opening - which it did and all files were once again present.