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Known Participant
June 30, 2019
Answered

Lightroom CC Classic deleted all pictures, when syncing with cloud

  • June 30, 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 1487 views

I had two catalogues.

I had Catalogue one synced to Lightroom Cloud, but then wanted the second Catalogue synced, so i stopped syncing, deleted all pictures, so the first catalogue doesnt show up in the first one and started syncing the second catalogue. When I was finished with the second catalogue online, I again stopped syncing and deleted all pictures from the cloud.

When I started syncing the first Catalogue again, instead of uploading all the pictures again, it deleted everything from that catalogue. Thankfully I had a backup, but I cant sync this Catalogue to Lightroom Cloud now.

Can Lightroom please ask before, if it realizes that the sync will delete 1000 pictures or give some way to undo the deleting.

And secondly, what should be the correct workflow here? I obviously had the wrong approach, but I dont know, what the right one would be.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Jao vdL

The way to keep your collections while deleting images from the cloud is to set the collection to no longer sync in Classic. This will delete the images from the cloud but will not remove them from the collections. If you delete the images from a browser, iOS Lightroom or Lightroom "Cloud" on the desktop, they will get deleted from the Classic collections.

4 replies

Jao vdLCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
July 3, 2019

The way to keep your collections while deleting images from the cloud is to set the collection to no longer sync in Classic. This will delete the images from the cloud but will not remove them from the collections. If you delete the images from a browser, iOS Lightroom or Lightroom "Cloud" on the desktop, they will get deleted from the Classic collections.

jm-lemmiAuthor
Known Participant
July 3, 2019

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Jao+vdL  schrieb

The way to keep your collections while deleting images from the cloud is to set the collection to no longer sync in Classic. This will delete the images from the cloud but will not remove them from the collections. If you delete the images from a browser, iOS Lightroom or Lightroom "Cloud" on the desktop, they will get deleted from the Classic collections.

Great, thats the workflow tipp I was looking for. I though disassociating the catalogue was enough.

Now my last question: How can I get the original Catalogue to sync to Lightroom now? Every time, I try to sync it again, it will again remove all pictures from my collections, and sinsce those are nearly 1000, I dont want to sort them again. Can I tell Lightroom, that the Classic Catalogue is the newer one right now, and to overwrite any changes, I did in the Cloud?

Or will I just have to abandon the Catalogue and make a new one to work again properly?

Community Expert
July 3, 2019

Not sure but it might be possible to remove the sync tag from the synced

collections before turning on the catalog sync. Have never tried this so

not sure whether this is possible.

Theresa J
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 1, 2019

You can only sync one catalog at a time. Syncing a Classic catalog to Lightroom is like turning on the connection to the cloud. When you turn on sync everything in the cloud gets downloaded to your computer so that the Classic catalog can work with it. Nothing is deleted from the cloud. Go to lightroom.adobe.com and log in to your account. You will find all of your images there.

jm-lemmiAuthor
Known Participant
July 3, 2019

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Theresa+J  schrieb

You can only sync one catalog at a time.

I got that now, and that was also part of the warning, when starting to sync the next catalogue.

But what is the correct workflow for changing the catalogue, I want to sync?

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 1, 2019

Are the pictures gone when you click 'All Photographs'? Or did you perhaps have 'All Synced Photographs' selected and noticed the pictures were removed from that collection? I think the latter. Like Jao says, syncing does not delete images from the catalog. Deleting the online images does remove them from synced collections in Lr Classic however.

-- Johan W. Elzenga
jm-lemmiAuthor
Known Participant
July 3, 2019

JohanElzenga  schrieb

Are the pictures gone when you click 'All Photographs'? Or did you perhaps have 'All Synced Photographs' selected and noticed the pictures were removed from that collection?

Yes, that was it. The pictures are still in all photographs, but are not in their Collections anymore.

But thats still a bit annoying. I got all of it back, through the daily backups, so nothing was lost, but now I cant sync to the cloud anymore, or it will again remove them from my Collections.

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 3, 2019

jm-lemmi  wrote

JohanElzenga   schrieb

Are the pictures gone when you click 'All Photographs'? Or did you perhaps have 'All Synced Photographs' selected and noticed the pictures were removed from that collection?

Yes, that was it. The pictures are still in all photographs, but are not in their Collections anymore.

That is to be expected and cannot be avoided, because these are synced collections. If you remove a photo from the cloud, you'll remove it from the synced collection(s). There is no way around that other than duplicate those collections, and then use one set to sync and the other set for the local things you want to do with collections. If you want to sync the photos again, then add them to the synced collections again.

Bottom line: don't switch catalogs to sync, that doesn't work very well...

-- Johan W. Elzenga
Community Expert
June 30, 2019

Syncing from a catalog in Classic will never delete the pictures from that catalog, it can only unsync the images. It will not delete anything. Images might get removed from synced collections but will still be in the catalog. You must have done something else like explicitly delete the images inside Classic