Importing lightroom catalog.

[Cocraven2018]

I had to clear my computer off for a class I am currently taking. I exported my lightroom catalog to an external hard drive. Fast forward a few months and now here I am, importing my catalog again. Where are my edits? I'm hoping there's another step I have to complete?... I can see all of my photos... but the edits aren't there...?

thanks...

[Just Shoot Me]

What exactly do you mean buy Export the catalog and then Import the catalog. You didn't need to do either.

All you needed to do is Copy the catalog file, and the preview folder if you want, to the external drive. Then when you wanted to start using LR again you Copy the catalog file back to your computer.

Did you Erase, Format, your drive for this class or just remove some files to gain some drive space?

Did you copy over the actual picture files? They are NOT stored in the LR catalog file. The LR catlaog file is just a database file. There are No images in it.

[Cocraven2018]

Alright, sorry for the confusion. 

I exported the catalog from lightroom by going through the File, export catalog. I have the catalog safe on external hard drive. We had to clear everything and erase the drives on out computer. When I went and plugged my external hard drive into my laptop yesterday, and imported the catalog back into my empty lightroom, all of the pictures were imported, but the edits weren't. Are the edit's somewhere else I need to import them from? Though you said the catalog doesn't take the pictures with it, somehow mine did. 

[Just Shoot Me]

What I said is "There are No images IN the LR Calssic Catalog file". They are separate files. Importing images into the catalog places a Reference, a record, of the image name, where it is stored on your drive and so forth in the LR Database file, the LR Catalog file.

But if you used "Export as Catalog" it Copied all the images with it. That doesn't mean the images were IN the catlaog file.

So then you used "Import from Another Catalog". That is all well and good but you didn't need to use either option.

All you needed to do was Copy the Catalog file and Copy all your images to that external drive and then when you were ready to start using it again copy both back to the correct folders they were in originally on your computer hard drive.

In any event why do you think there are no edits included?

[Tony_See]

When you Import image files into Lightroom Classic, you have to choose a Destination for them.

Can you recall where that was?

If the Destination was an external drive, and this was re-connected when you used the software a few months later, you may well be seeing the source images.

Otherwise, you might be seeing a Preview of that image file as illustrated in the screen shot.

Can you confirm some more of your system workflow so we can understand what might or might not be missing in the solution so far thanks?

The shot below taken form the Develop Module . . .