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Online and local Lightroom Library damaged

Community Beginner ,
Jul 19, 2021 Jul 19, 2021

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Hello

All my catalog is lost with Lightroom CC, the one which is showing has no sense... I still have all the images but all folders of the catalog are lost!

Is there a way to retreive my original catalog ?

Thank you

Alexandre

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Community Expert ,
Jul 19, 2021 Jul 19, 2021

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Let me move this to the Lightroom forum for you, which is the appropriate forum for your question.

The Using the Community forum is for help in using the Adobe Support Community forums, not for help with specific programs. Product questions should be posted in the associated product community.

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 22, 2021 Jul 22, 2021

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thak you

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Community Expert ,
Jul 19, 2021 Jul 19, 2021

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Lightroom doesn't have folders only Albums. Did you by chance convert an old Lightroom catalog to the new Lightroom which is cloud based? 

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 22, 2021 Jul 22, 2021

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Dear Theresa in Lightroom CC you can organise albumls in to folders and sub-folders. We did this for two years when we migrated from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom CC

 

Now all the structures / organisation / name of folders (even folders) totally disapear. We lost about two years of classification and organisations of the photos :o(

 

Have a nice day

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Community Expert ,
Jul 22, 2021 Jul 22, 2021

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I understand what your the issue is now from seeing your screen captures. Lightroom does have folders that can be used to organize albums. In Lightroom Classic these are called Collection Sets and folders refer to the file structure on the hard drive. 

The broken structure of your organization should not have happened. I have not seen this before. I don't know if this would help but if it was me I would disable the local storage option, delete the library package and let Lightroom rebuild itself again. You didn't say for sure if you have local storage turned on, but if you do it would slow down the process and it would create a much larger library package. I'm not sure if this will fix the issue but it may be worth trying. I'm sorry I don't have a better answer.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 20, 2021 Jul 20, 2021

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Please post a screenshot so we can tell what is wrong.

 

Adobe have confused everyone with their names for Lightroom. There is no "Lightroom CC",  the original program that was called "Lightroom" is now "Lightroom Classic" and there is another cloud-dependent program called just "Lightroom".

 

My guess is that you have installed this last cloudy one, because it has no catalogue.

 

So post that screenshot so we can see what you are seeing.

 

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 22, 2021 Jul 22, 2021

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Dear John

Thank you fort the help

In short :

In Lightroom (Cloud version) you can organise albums in to folders and sub-folders. We did this for two years when we migrated from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom 

 

Now all the structures / organisation / name of folders (even folders) totally disapear. We lost about two years of classification and organisations of the photos :o(

 

I had a support from two technicians from adobe ( from India i think / The second one was suppose to be advanced but he made me do the same think as the first technician support)

So i made this twice :

1/ Delete the package : Lightroom Library.lrlibrary (on Mac os X Big Sur in the User / Pictures folder

2/ Re Open Lightroom 

3/ Wait for full online synchronisation (as we have around 350K photos it took a while)

They said when full synchro would be complete it should get back to normal, but unfortunately it did not at all

 

Before doing all this i did save a copy of the Lightroom Library.lrlibrary (the one suppose to be corrupted / damaged) before deleting and re-sync online

 

The point is that the file inside the package : Managed Catalog.mcat. is now with a size of : 4,68 Gb

The other file (saved localy before re-sync is : 18,65 Gb

 

So i tried to explain this to the the second technician and asking if there was a way to fix this file ( which is a catalog based on sql lite 3. structure)... He said i did not knew about it.

 

I think both those two technicians did not have the sufficient knowledge / training / to face that kind of issue... so i am still very disapointed.

 

I will post two images : one is from Lightroom classis (which we do not use since two years now / where you could see how photos were organised / classified and the other is now with lightroom (either locally or the web version looks the same damaged structure)

Thank you very much for your help

AlexandreScreenshot 2021-07-22 at 12.36.26.pngScreenshot 2021-07-20 at 08.32.20.png

 

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Community Expert ,
Jul 22, 2021 Jul 22, 2021

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Is Lightroom Classic now irrelevant to you? I assume it is,

 

Lightroom Library.lrlibrary or anything stored locally is only a local copy of whatever is in the cloud. Assuming anything in Lightroom Library.lrlibrary has been synced, you can delete that file as much as you want and without doing any damage. Next time you open the program, it will start rebuilding from the cloud data.

 

In other words, the data in Adobe's cloud (which you see in the web browser) is the only data that is available. You can't restore from any kind of backup. So if you no longer see what Cloudy Lightroom calls "folders", you will need to recreate them and drag the albums into them.

 

I have no idea why you might have lost the folder and sub-folder structure. That should not happen, and I don't think I have seen other reports of it. I am certainly surprised that I see "perspectives" multiple times, and I am going to point out this thread to an Adobe contact.

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 22, 2021 Jul 22, 2021

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Dear John thank you

 

So Adobe has our Catalog file corrupted some ways and we lost more than  2 years of collaborative work.

I had the feeling the online file store on the cloud is unfortunately the only legit one, which means then is there a way Adobe could have a look ( I mean somebody highly skilled in Adobe) at the library and find a way to put it in it s original state (like two weeks ago) ?

 

I still wonder why my (old backed up locally) library is way more bigger than the new one by a factor of 5...

 

In the broken structure of the folders and album you saw from the picture, it was possible we had multiple ones called either "LIGTS / PERSPECTIVE / EXTERIOR / INTERIOR......" but each one of us was originally organised into folders / sub folder.... according to the name/number reference of the projects and/or the type of projects and/or the type of travel or event..... 

I have to admit tha i am in a very delicate position in the company as selecting Adobe was my choice for a beter collaborative work between the teams.... My job is may be not at risk yet; but i will have to offer a solution other than redoing two years of work for everybody. 

I am very stressed with your response as it seems nobody seems to really try to find or even understand what was going wrong. The indidan support tech from adobe was suppose to contact me back after re-sync the library ( finally for nothing twice) and no news since...

Best regrads

Alexandre

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Community Expert ,
Jul 22, 2021 Jul 22, 2021

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Alexandre

Can you do a screenshot from Lightroom web showing all those Perspectives albums? I am wondering if we are seeing a display problem, that the structure is still recorded in Adobe's cloud but is not being shown. Web is the most authoritiative source of what is recorded.

If you scroll to the top and bottom of the list, are there any folders? I ask this because it is possible to create all those Perspectives albums at the same level, but only if one creates them in a folder and then drags them to the top level (if you use Create Album, LR automatically adds a +2). In this way it is possible to create the problem oneself.

"I still wonder why my (old backed up locally) library is way more bigger than the new one by a factor of 5..."

I am not too concerned by this. It's only a local cache and can grow because of a number of factors such as zooming

in and out, and needing to pull more data from the cloud.

When you say "collaborative", do you use that word just in a very general sense? I ask because there is actually a feature called "collaborative proofing" which is a "technology preview", and I want to rule out this possibility.

For now I would keep calm. I have not seen this exact problem before, but I'm trying to draw the attention of others who may recognise it and remember some key detail.

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 23, 2021 Jul 23, 2021

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Dear John

Thank you so much for your help....

By collaborative i symply mean our team, no specific adobe feature/plan

Below a few screen copies of  the online version of Lightroom / There are still some folder but no more structure with sub-folders....and thousands of folders lost

 

 

Screenshot 2021-07-23 at 13.23.20.pngScreenshot 2021-07-23 at 13.23.38.pngScreenshot 2021-07-23 at 13.23.52.pngScreenshot 2021-07-23 at 13.24.14.png

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Community Expert ,
Jul 23, 2021 Jul 23, 2021

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Alexandre

I am busy today and will study those pictures tomorrow. But to follow up on the team collaboration, has anyone else used your account to log into Lightroom?

John

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 26, 2021 Jul 26, 2021

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Dear John.

Nobody used lightroom since 15 days now when we discovered tyhe issue.

Before yes i had one person that opened Lighroom from the PC Computer, and she could see we had the same problem on the other computert (1 Mac and one PC), so i asked her to close Lightroom on the PC and do nothing except make a second back up of our photo Library on an external hard drive (in case this bug extends to our photos folders).

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 27, 2021 Jul 27, 2021

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Dear John

I took some time to go deeper into the structure of the catalog.

All the Folders and Albums name are store in :

- Managed Catalog.wfindex / albums (table)

Unfortunately even the file i did save before Adobe technician asked me to re-sync all the photos... is coirrupted and mostly all the folders and album names disapeared.

Unless Adobe got a backup befor July 13 (which is the date it seems of the issue) i do not see any solution.

I still have a back up of the catalog structure from 2018 in Lightroom Classic 

So if there is a way to use this catalog structure and insert it into Lightroom CC we shall only loose about 2 years of work...

Have a nice day.

 

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Community Expert ,
Jul 27, 2021 Jul 27, 2021

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I am finding it hard to see exactly what it wrong, because there are so many albums and so many folders, and because I am not in your shoes with knowledge of what I've had before. Imagine how you might prove to me that something is wrong? Can you show me a specific error?

 

So for example, in Lightroom Web, I can see DTEK_FACTORY is a folder. Click it to expand the folder - are the albums right.

 

"I still have a back up of the catalog structure from 2018 in Lightroom Classic

So if there is a way to use this catalog structure and insert it into Lightroom CC we shall only loose about 2 years of work..."

No. The structure of collection sets and collections in Classic cannot be synced to Adobe's cloud in any way. Obviously collections = albums, but the collection sets do not directly connect to anything in the cloud.

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 28, 2021 Jul 28, 2021

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What is wrong is that mostly all folders / subfolders.... we created since two years totally disapeared, i would say at least around 2 500 folders.

The  "Managed Catalog.wfindex" file on Adobe Lightroom CC has been damaged, and do not how and why.... bit i can tell you that when it sync locally with our computers, we then lost all structure.

I did open a copy of that file, and there is inside only 1306 records (we shall be at least i think around 2500 folders/subfolders/albums in it.

I did open the structure in a SQLlite reader and the strange thing is that in the Table Album, it shows that almost no folders/albums where cretaed in 2019, none in 2020, and none before July 13 2021 (the date it crashes).... So i can tell there is a massive bug whith this file/table... i do need top talk with someone who reqlly knows about this, unfortunately the Indian technicians i do have online for support do not have a clue about it and their english is so special that we have difficulties to have an accurate communication...

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Community Expert ,
Jul 28, 2021 Jul 28, 2021

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"So for example, in Lightroom Web, I can see DTEK_FACTORY is a folder. Click it to expand the folder - are the albums right."

"I did open a copy of that file, and there is inside only 1306 records (we shall be at least i think around 2500 folders/subfolders/albums in it."

 

In your web screenshot, DTEK_FACTORY is a folder, so inside it should be albums and not photos. So expand it with the arrow to its left and see the albums inside it, or click it.

 

Maybe DTEK_FACTORY will show the albums and subfolders you expect. If it does, pick another folder as an example that demonstrates to a complete stranger that "mostly all folders / subfolders.... we created since two years totally disapeared".

 

As far as you can tell, are all the photos still shown in LR Web?

 

In your first screenshot, you show lots of folders called Perspectives. Choose the first one, expand it and see what's in there. Should this Perspectives be inside another folder? Which? And what else is missing from that other folder?

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 29, 2021 Jul 29, 2021

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Dear John

Yes all the photos seems to be there online

Here is a screen copy of DTEK FACTORY, i do not know what you want to explain me, but you will see the structure on the picture.

 

For example : All Folders and/or Albums named such as "Light" - "Perspectives" - "Pers" - "Selection" - "RDC"....ect where all inside Folder such as for exemple :

Chantiers

Chantier / Hotels

Chantier / Residence

.....

 

I have check our old Library from Lightromm Classic and we already had in 2018, 6586 entries in the file :

LIghtrooom_Classic_Image-Bang_Optima.lrcat

Table : AgLibraryFolder

Here the export into CSV, for you to beter understand what we lost from Lightroom CC

Have a nice day.

 

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Adobe Employee ,
Jul 29, 2021 Jul 29, 2021

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Hi @pierret22352875 

 

I'm sorry you've had such a hard time with your folder structure. @john beardsworth reached out tofor additional  help. We've reviewed the entire thread and the Lightroom engineering team is taking a look on the back end. Once we hear back from them with any feedback or next steps I'll reach out to you via this thread. 

 

Thank you to all the ACPs that helped. ❤️

Best, 

Careeeesa

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Adobe Employee ,
Jul 29, 2021 Jul 29, 2021

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Hi @pierret22352875 , 

The team is requesting your system information and what your setting are for Local Storage.

 

  • System Info: You can find your system preferences by going to Help > System Info while in Lightroom. Save that information into a text file and share it with me via private message. 
  • Local Storage: Capture a screenshot of your Local Storage settings. you can find this under Preferences > Local Storage. 

 

Thank you! 

Best, 

Careeeesa

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Adobe Employee ,
Jul 29, 2021 Jul 29, 2021

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And make sure this is for the Windows machine that was used to access the catalog, as that's what seems to have sent the delete album/folder commands.

 

Matt

(also Adobe employee)

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 30, 2021 Jul 30, 2021

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Dear Careeesa and Matt

 

First of all thank you very much for the Help, the situtation is really critical for me and our team....

 

It is importany you be fully aware that when we discovered all the folder / subfolder / albums structure of the catalog were broken; we did contact support from adobe. I had personnaly online two different support technician (Basic - then advanced - From India i think according to their specific accent). They both asked me to delete and totaly reconstruct the local database; telling me it shall re-sync with the online backup and get back to normal. I did it twice (because both technicianbs asked for it) with no positive result.

 

To my knowledge, either on Windows or Mac machine; nobody deleted the Folders / Sub Folders... as we did have more than 6000 of them, it would be mostly impossible to mess up manually (one or two folder would be a thing... but thousands of them, i do not have a clue how it would be possible).

 

I did post on a prevoius message the Folder Catalog structure - CSV Format - we used to have (on Lightroom Classic in 2018) for you to have a basic idea how it used to be organised in Lightroom CC.

 

Thanks again for your so needed help

Alexandre

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Adobe Employee ,
Jul 30, 2021 Jul 30, 2021

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Hi @pierret22352875

 

Thank you for providing that information. We've forwarded it to the team. Have you shared your password with anyone? May I also ask you to provide the system info for your Mac and the same location settings you did for your Windows machine?

Sorry if I'm making you repeat any information you may have previously shared. 

 

Best, 

Careeeesa

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 02, 2021 Aug 02, 2021

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Deqr Ms Careeeesa

 

No we did not share any of our information login/pass

Even if we were hacked, i do not understand why our database woulkd have been damaged (no photos are missing, only the catalog structure)

Here are the infos you asked for

Have a nice day.

Alexandre

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