Missing catalog in LR Classic

[ilab7969133]

Recent  update to LR Classic, now catalog and backup is missing. Multiple catalogs that suddenly needed upgrades to work with Classic? Images on  external HD. Catalog was on internal SSD. Is is possible to create a new catalog and re-import my omages?  Thank you for any help yu can give.

Ila

[JP Hess]

What version of Lightroom did you update FROM? If it was far enough back then the catalogs will have to be upgraded in order to be compatible. But that's no big deal. Lightroom Classic will simply create new version of the catalog that will include all the work that you have done previously. The catalog will have the same name, but will have a -2 added to the end of its name. Yes, you can create a new catalog and import your images again because the images are not in the catalog. But if you do that then you will have to do all of the editing again.

[Conrad C]

Are you thinking a catalog is missing because Lightroom Classic is displaying the catalog upgrade dialog box? If that’s it, it means nothing is missing — it’s just that a major version upgrade of Lightroom Classic (for example, version 8 to version 9) involves a change to the catalog format. So all existing catalogs need to be upgraded to the current version. I think a catalog format upgrade has been part of every major version upgrade since Lightroom 1. Nothing is missing, you just have to select your normal working catalog, note and remember the new name that Lightroom Classic gives it, let Lightroom Classic upgrade that catalog to the current version, and you will see all your images and edits as you did before. You can rename the catalog if you want.

As Jim said, there is absolutely no point in starting a new catalog and re-importing everything. You would be starting all of your work from scratch. That should not be necessary if all you need to do is upgrade your catalog to the current version.

Because this is such a standard procedure, the next time Lightroom Classic version number goes up a whole number, that is the next time we will probably need to upgrade our catalog formats.