Lr Classic v14.4 Lost KWs: Hierarchy and photo tags

[annonshp]

Lr Classic v14.4 Lost KWs in the Keyword List and removed keywords assigned to photos.

Example

KW List had a hierarchy of political taxanomic terms (continent, federal, state/province/canton/etc., county/shire/etc., municipality). For example, Kennebunkport Maine would be: Kennebunkport<York<Maine<US<NA<_Places. All of the hierarchy is missing.

Most photos, 10s of thousands, had the keywords from _Places removed. Some have only the municipality (no hierarchy).

I have other hierarchies of keywords that are also missing and those KWs removed from photos.

How do I restore them?

I have tried the post that discussed deleting <catalog> Helper.lrdata. It did not restore the KWs.

No other discussions seem to apply. 

[Moved from ‘Bugs’ to ‘Discussions’ by moderator, according to forum rules.]

[dj_paige]

I can think of one possibility:

You have (accidentally?) opened the wrong catalog file. Please check other catalog files (name ends with .LRCAT) on your hard disks by opening them in LrC (double-click on the file to open it) and see if you can find the catalog of interest.

If that doesn't work, check your recent backups to see if the keyword hierarchy is present in the backup. If so, we can advise on how to "migrate" these keywords to the main catalog.

[annonshp]

Used the correct catalog. The KW hierarchies have been in use for years, some for over a decade. 

[dj_paige]

So see if the recent backups have the correct keyword hierarchy

[annonshp]

Waiting for the XMP file writes to finish up.

Stay tuned. This is my #1 for today.

[annonshp · Accepted solution]

Question

Is there a way to copy image Develop Metadata only from the corrupt Catalog to the recovered Catalog on a folder by folder basis? Image by image basis?    I know I can <File | Export> then <File | Import>. I want fine-grained control over which metadata is imported. 

Solution

Restoring from backup. Now rolling forward= image restore for 4/28/25 - today  by

- OS image file copy

- Lrc | Library | Syncronize Folder

- Reprocess images (hence the QQ above)

Hypothetical cause: Lrc | File | Import from Another Catalog at end of May from traveling HD.

Comment: wont do that again

[dj_paige]

Import from Another Catalog has several options for you to control what gets replaced; maybe one of these works for you.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/import-photos-various-sources.html

Scroll down to "Import from A Different Lightroom Catalog" then scroll further down to bullet 5