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I have all my photos and the LR catalog stored on a NAS. Just installed LR Classic on a new machine, attempted to import my most recent catalog backup but none of the images OR the folder structure are present. All the photo thumbnails are grey with the missing photo icon, and it just says "All photographs", none of the folder tree from my imports. I tried clicking the missing photo icon to relink the media, but that didn't work. I navigated to where each photo I tried was located, clicked on it and hit select, but it's still gray.
Possibly of note is the machine I had been using is Win10 and the new one is a Mac, but that shouldn't matter for an .lrcat file, right? I dragged the cat file local before unzipping and opening it (prior to doing that I got an error trying to open from the NAS). I'm running the same LR version on both machines--9.2.1.
The reason why you see grey thumbnails is because you only copied the catalog file, not the previews. That is no problem, but it does mean that Lightroom needs to rebuild the previews, and in order to do that it needs to access the images. Because Windows and Mac use different ways to define a drive, the links to the images in the catalog will be broken and need to be reconnected first. So this is all as expected.
The only thing that is not as expected (and not possible) is that the images wou
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Close Lightroom on the computer, if the nas is connected to the computer locate the Catalog file on the NAS it's the one with the .lrcat. If there is no file with the extension .lrcat.lock (.LRCAT.LOCK) then proceed to double click on the Catalog file this should prompt Lightroom to boot an open the Catalog.
The should be no need to import the files or the files Catalog. Do not do this.
I note this is your first post in the forum so I would like to say welcome.
Please respond it this works and if not connect the forum for more help.
Important, make sure you have a backup of the Catalog File on your other Computer.
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What format is the NAS? If you where using this NAS on a PC it probally was NTFS format. This will read only on a MAC. I use a program called Paragon NTFS for mac to be able to read and write this type of drive on a mac. The drive will actually work faster if you backup date and reformat drive to a mac format like MAC OS Extended (Journaled)
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The reason why you see grey thumbnails is because you only copied the catalog file, not the previews. That is no problem, but it does mean that Lightroom needs to rebuild the previews, and in order to do that it needs to access the images. Because Windows and Mac use different ways to define a drive, the links to the images in the catalog will be broken and need to be reconnected first. So this is all as expected.
The only thing that is not as expected (and not possible) is that the images would only be in 'All Photographs' and not in any folder tree. That is simply not possible because 'All Photographs' is a collection, not a physical storage place. Folders are the physical storage place, so every image must be in some folder and that folder must be in the folder panel. It is possible that the entire folder panel is hidden. You can unhide it by right-clicking in an empty space of a panel header. Another way to find the folder is to select an image and then choose the menu 'Photo - Go to Folder in Library'.
You should now see the folders, but they will show as 'missing'. Reconnect them (reconnect folders, not images) at the top folder level:
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/
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Thank you so much! Folders popped right back up, then I just had to go in and locate each folder, now the previews have loaded.
And to Randy's point, I hadn't even thought about that. Drives are formatted NTFS, but it appears I'm able to edit.
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As a NAS is a networked disk, not a local disk, I do not think that the formatting is relevant. The NAS software takes care of the connection.
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Gotcha, thanks. And thank you again very much for the help!