Lost the book layout after a Lightroom crash

[michelh73117614]

Hi,

I was working on a book and lightroom crashed for an unknown reason. During the crash lightroom asked to send a report, what I did. But after the restart, the created book layout was missing, I can still view the selected pictures, but I have only empty layout pages.

Can someone help me on this topic, as I spent hours creating this book ?

Thanks

Michel

[MarekMularczyk]

Are you saying that you were working on a book for hours and you didn't save it?

[Laura Shoe]

I'm sorry to hear that you lost your book, Michel! This is unfortunately very common. While creating a saved book is important, additionally, the best way to protect yourself against losing a book is to back up your catalog very frequently as you build the book. Go to Edit (PC) or Lightroom (Mac) >Catalog Settings, and set the backup frequency to "Every time Lightroom exits." Then close LR frequently and back up.

If you have backed up LR recently, then open a catalog backup and see if it has your book - the location of catalog backups is specified in the backup prompt that comes up when you close LR. Go to that  folder, open a recent zip file and double-click on the .lrcat file and have LR relaunch with it. If this has your book (and you don't mind losing any other work that you did since that backup), then close LR, and copy that catalog file out of the backups folder into your main catalog folder, renaming it as well. Then double-click on it to launch LR with it. Finally, go to Edit or Lightroom>Preferences, and under default catalog, click on the dropdown and choose that catalog, so that LR always launches it from now on.

[Laura Shoe]

If the backup doesn't have your book, then you can get back to your main catalog by going to Open Recent - it will be the second in the list (with the one you're looking at as the first in the list.)