Suddenly all my collections disapeared! And i can even create a new collection,

[marianaricaud]

Please Help! Suddenly all my collections disapeared and i cant even create a new collection! Its like the "create new collection" doesnt work, and ive lost all my collections! im updated and tried closing, restarting, everything!

{Moved from Lightroom Cloud to Lightroom Classic Forum by Moderator} 

[Per Berntsen]

Please tell us what Adobe application you are using, and a moderator will move your post to the correct forum.

This forum (Using the community) is for general forum issues, not for product support.

[marianaricaud]

Sorry, its Lightroom

[kglad]

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from using the community">

[JohanElzenga]

Deleted

[Jim Wilde]

Can you tell us if your collections are missing from the Collections panel, or is the Collections panel itself missing? If the latter, that's easily fixed.....go to the menu bar>Window>Panels>click on Collections.

But if the panel is showing do you see your collections with a zero count, or are they simply not showing? Are you sure you are using the correct catalog, i.e. apart from the collections issue does everything else appear normal?

[marianaricaud]

The collection panel is still there but all the collections are gone , and I can't create a new collection, click the button and it does nothing 

yes i am in the right catalog 😞 everything is gone , tryed everything and I just can't even create a new one to star over .

[JohanElzenga]

Start by resetting the preferences: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/

If that does not help, try if you can create collections in a new catalog, because your catalog may be corrupted.

[marianaricaud]

Yes I created a new cat and In the new one I can , but I need to rescue the prior one, is there a way if it indeed is corrupted ? Why did this happen ?

[JohanElzenga]

The most obvious way is to use a catalog backup. Did you make regular catalog backups?

I don't know why it happened, but file corruption can occur on a computer.

[Jim Wilde]

One other thing to try first: close LrC, go to the catalog folder (the catalog folder of the troublesome catalog, not the newly created catalog) using Finder/File Explorer (not sure which OS you are using), locate and delete the "your catalog name Helper.lrdata" file/folder (nothing else, only the file/folder ending with "Helper.lrdata" then try to start LrC again using the problem catalog. If that doesn't help, then try the backup catalog as suggested by @JohanElzenga.

[JohanElzenga]

Good point. The corruption may be in the Helper file rather than in the catalog file, and Lightroom will simply rebuild that file if you remove it.