Trouble moving from Lightroom 4 to my new mac

[a.attenb]

Hi. I have backed up everything to an external harddrive and plugged it in to my new mac. When I double click the Lightroom Catalog.lrcat file it opens in my new lightroom with a single exclamation mark and no error message at all. Please see screenshot pic attached. Does anyone know what is going wrong or how to fix this?

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

[Ian Lyons]

Can you confirm that you've installed Lightroom 4 on your new Mac

[a.attenb]

No I’ve installed the latest version of Lightroom cloud. I did install
Lightroom 4 but when I tried to open it I got a message to say that it
would damage my computer and should be moved to the bin, which I did. Is it
not possible to move my Lightroom 4 catalog to a newer version of
Lightroom?

[JohanElzenga]

Lightroom cloud is not a newer version of Lightroom 4. It is an entirely different application, that does not work with catalog files but with a catalog in the cloud. You need to subscribe to and install Lightroom Classic if you want the newest version of the Lightroom you are used to.

[JohanElzenga]

It looks like your Mac has set the new Adobe Lightroom (not Adobe Lightroom Classic) to open the catalog file. That is obviously not possible. Here's how to fix that: Make sure Lightroom Classic is installed, single-click on the catalog file and press Cmd-i. That will bring up the Finder info dialog. In that dialog you can select which application should open this file. Select Adobe Lightroom Classic and click on the 'Save all' button.

 

If your new Mac can still run the old Lightroom 4, then use the same procedure but install and choose Lightroom 4 instead of Lightroom Classic.

[Ian Lyons]

Lr4 can be installed and run on M1/M2 Mac. 

I check that it can be installed, run and even launched via double-clicking the catalog. I had no problems with either, hence asking the question as to whether it has been installed on the OP's new computer.

[a.attenb]

Thanks Ian -issue sorted 🙏

[a.attenb]

Many thanks Johan! Problem solved. I appreciate your help!