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Here's the problem and solution.
Problem:
Today I loaded LR Classic and all my history from Jan 2019 to now (May 15, 2019) was gone.
I noticed my catalog was still there and that the upgrade had created a new catalog with a '-2' in the filename.
original file: Personal-2018.lrcat size: 905,524 KB
upgraded file: Personal-2018-2.lrcat size: 312,976 KB
Based on the size of the upgraded file, something doesn't look right.
So I tried opening the original file using LR classic and it converted the file again, and when it was done, the history is still missing.
As an experiment, I opened the original file with Lightroom CC and I can see all my history up to today, so I know it's there.
So my theory is that something messed up when converting the catalogue and I suspect it is due to the size ot the catalogue, so I thought I would only try to import part of the data that I need. I was hopeful that working with a smaller subset of data would allow me to circumvent the problem.
Solution
Since I know the data is there, as proven by opening the catalogue with LR CC, here is how I managed to recover the data.
I opened LR Classic and created a new, empty catalogue.
Then I selected the option to import from an existing catalogue (selected the original).
I was able to select which items I wanted to import, so I manually selected all the folders from this year and click ok.
It ran for about 30 minutes, but when it was done I can open Lightroom Classic and access the history I need.
Phew.. I was mostway through editing 800 images from a wedding so would have been choked it I had to redo that.
I think this is an issue that Adobe needs to explore, but I at least hope this helps some of you who may run into similar issues.
Cheers,
David Watson
Calgary Amateur Photographers Group
Sorry, you are wrong - it did not open an old catalog. Lightroom classic 8.3 absolutely converted the current catalog (created a new copy with the name incremented) and if I tried to open the original catalog, it would try to convert it again. I was even working with Adobe support and they could not figure out why it was happening, so I had to solve the problem myself. As I mentioned, I had to create a new catalog and import a smaller portion of the dataset to prevent it from becoming corrupted
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The upgrade to Lightroom Classic 8.3 does not convert your catalog, unless you upgraded from version 6 or earlier. It sounds like perhaps Lightroom opened an old catalog.
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Sorry, you are wrong - it did not open an old catalog. Lightroom classic 8.3 absolutely converted the current catalog (created a new copy with the name incremented) and if I tried to open the original catalog, it would try to convert it again. I was even working with Adobe support and they could not figure out why it was happening, so I had to solve the problem myself. As I mentioned, I had to create a new catalog and import a smaller portion of the dataset to prevent it from becoming corrupted by the conversion process.
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An upgrade to Lightroom 8.3 does not convert your Lightroom 8.2 catalog, period. If you don’t want to accept that fact, then I can’t help you find out what really happened.