Can't open catalogs in Lightroom 5.0

[Guest]

Hello,
I can't open catalogs from previous versions of Lightroom in Lightroom 5.0.
How can I fix it so I don't lose thousands of photos?

[Ranjisha Sengupta]

Hi there.

Thanks for reaching out. 

What operating system are you using? Where are these catalogs located? Would you mind sharing what exactly do you see when you try to open them? Do you see any error messages? 

We're here to help, just need some more info.

Regards,

Ranjisha

[JohanElzenga]

Sounds like you may have the wrong version of Lightroom. There is Lightroom and there is Lightroom Classic. If you have Lightroom 5 installed, then you do not have a catalog. This is a new application, that stores images and edits in the cloud. Lightroom does have a local library, but that is just a cache to speed things up. If you have an old catalog (with file extension .lrcat) then you need Lightroom Classic, not Lightroom 5.