Please help! All my 3000+ photos just disappeared in front of my eyes - total = 0

[Guest]

Hello

this morning I got up and was accessing my photos as normal.  I use lightroom mobile on an iPad pro.  My photos are all separated into albums and I have just got back from holidays.  I was doing what I normally do, just accessing some photos to share and suddenly all my albums went to photo count 0.   I am shaking (literally), my fingers won't type properly.  I ran downstairs and checked my old  iPad and the same thing happened, they just disappeared.  And phone, same thing, then desktop same thing.  I feel like vomiting, I am so stressed.  Of course, i haven't saved anywhere else for about six months.  Please someone help me, I am about to have a stroke! I have no idea on earth what could have possibly happened.

[Guest]

Does anyone have an actual phone number I can call,?  I'm extremely stressed.

[selondon]

Hi, Sorry to hear this,

So that others can help and you can be given the best advice.....

Do you have a Photography Plan (with Lightroom CC Desktop etc.)?

Or the Mobile Only Plan (via App Store/Play Store)?

Or do you have the free App?

Also, on the iPad if you go to General/iPad Storage, can you see what amount of space the Lightroom CC is taking uo?

[Guest]

Hi, and thank you for considering trying to help.  I do have a Lightroom Photography Plan with Desktop CC etc.  I have it installed on my IPad Pro which is what i mostly use but also on my desktop, phone and an old iPad.

At the moment my iPad Pro is showing 1023.15 GB of 1 TB taken up in cloud storage and -22.44 GB of Locally stored copies *(note the negative there), 24.68 GB of coached files and 15.62 GB free. I’m afraid I know nothing about what that means and have never underestood what happens with the cache.

I swear on everything holy that I was doing nothing weird or unusual at all when this happened.    As I said, when this happened I was on the IPad Pro, I raced downstairs to my other equipment and the photos where there, and then they vanished as I watched.  The file structure is there with no photos in it other than the ones I added yesterday.  I took screen shots to ‘prove’ that I hadn’t imagined it.  I can share them here if they are of any use to anyone, but won’t clutter up the thread with them if they are not useful.

Honestly, I can’t describe how distressing this is.  People say that if their house was burning down the thing they would save is their photos.  How can this happen?

p.s. It might be useful for you to know that I have been using it for a couple of years with no trouble to date.

[Guest]

Hi again Selondon

Further to this discussion, As I said, I very rarely use my desktop computer however today I did in order to try to find out what might have happened.   This might explain it but I don't have a clue what to do about it:

1: I seem to have three different types of lightroom active

     1: Lightroom CC (2015) v.6

     2: Lightroom Classic CC v 8.1

     3: The latest Lightroom CC v. 1.5

Now, I am not going to apologise for being confused - what the hell are they doing with so many editions with the same name, or similar?  Anyway when I open them this is what happens:

1: Lightroom CC has 6592 photos up to 27th Feb, 2018

When I opened this I got a message that synching had been turned off due to duplicates.  I didn't do anything, not wanting to turn on synching in case I lose everything.

2: Lightroom classic CC has 8508 photos up to 10th August, 2018

Currently new photos (I took a few yesterday and edited them on Lightroom mobile) are synching with this version - Lightroom Class CC v. 8.1

** Many photos from the above two are duplicates. 

3.  The latest Lightroom CC Lightroom mobile v 1.5 has almost nothing in it, only the 55 photos I edited on the iPad pro in the last 48 hours.

So.... I will be trying to download the photos I hadn't backed up (about the last six months) and save them to dropbox before I do anything else.  It appears to me that what I want to do is get rid of the two old versions and just use the latest Lightroom CC, and I would very much like to repopulate the file structure exactly as it was before this melt down.   Any idea how I should go about that?  Please????

[selondon]

Briefly ignoring the different versions of Lightroom (yes, it is confusing), I think I am reading from your post that you have maxed out your Cloud Storage.

Maybe this is why the missing files never synced to the Cloud (they should do automatically).

So, firstly I’d advise to delete some older unwanted files from the Cloud at http://lightroom.adobe.com (that’s if you have any you can delete).

If not, and IF you have had sync enabled with Classic then the files in the Cloud should have downloaded to your local disc, if you have had enough space free there. If so, then these files can be deleted from the Cloud without deleting from your local disc. (Test it out on one maybe)

Another option would be to upgrade your Cloud Storage package if having everything in the Cloud is essential.

Anyway, once some space is freed up, the 3000 photos may start populating the Cloud (I have a suspicion they won’t though).

Failing that, am I reading correctly that you have a back up of these 3000 photos?

Hopefully, as I’ll be offline mostly, one of the other ACPs may be able to help also with better Classic knowledge and regarding updating to the latest software.

[Guest]

Hi, just in the hope that I catch you Selondon....firstly thank you.  When i go to the Lightroom URL you have posted above, the only thing there is exactly the same as Lightroom mobile, only the 55 photos I took over the weekend, so I am really confused as to what you are asking me to do there....well more the why than the what.  It looks to me as though Lightroom has deleted them all from there, and that is my original problem.  Should what is on lightroom.adobe.com be different to what is on my Lightroom mobile?  Because it isn’t.

On the other hand I have spent four hours tonight downloading and backing up what is on the old versions of Lightroom, and I also realised that I can get a lot of my recent stuff back via my iPad ‘recently deleted’ - thank God.  So within about a day or so I should have everything backed up, then I would feel more confident to delete anything.

That would leave me with a question..... if I had duplicates of everything on two outdated versions of Lightroom and that was taking up all my space  in the cloud, how do I get rid of it and reinstate what was was suddenly deleted from Lightroom mobile.

Surely it’s not a case of this company, Adobe, says ‘oh, you’re over your limit so we are just going to delete your entire life without even asking you if you want to increase your storage size’?  Surely...how could that work for a business?  I mean, obviously I am beyond desperate to get everything back with all the edits I had done and the presets etc., but after that I am clearly thinking, ’how can I ever avoid this happening again’ .... and the obvious answer would be to find another company that is reliable and has a help centre where I can talk to a human being in real time.

[selondon]

Right, so indeed yes it sounds like you don't need to delete anything at the Lightroom Web URL if there are only 55 photos. And yes this should match what is on Lightroom Mobile (as everything should be in Sync).

What I don't understand is why the iPad Pro is showing 1000GB of 1TB of Cloud Storage used.

It's almost like you have two accounts or a conflct.

It's going to take some time to pick all the info you give apart and this is a only a User to User forum, and whilst advice can be given, we can't look 'under the hood' so the speak.

I will read your posts again soon and hopefully someone else can assist also.

[Guest]

Dear Selondon

Thank you so much.  I know this is a user to user forum, but I don’t know what an ‘ACP’ is - are you employed by Adobe, because if not you are doing so much to help someone you don’t know, and I can’t thank you enough.  Whilst I am pathetically grateful for your help, I would love to talk to someone at Adobe who can do that thing where they take over your computer and have a look ‘under the hood’ for me, because I am so scared that I am going to make things worse tinkering around.

However, while I have you at my side I will give you some info that is probably important. This morning whilst backing up to my storage (I use Dropbox) I found a file that I do not recall ever creating. It’s called ‘Lightroom mobile  Synch’.  it’s got the majority of my photos in it, filed into years.   Does that tell you anything?

And yes, as you say above it is almost as though I have two accounts in conflict, but what do I do about that.  I would pay a lot of money to find a phone number for someone I can actually talk to at Adobe, but I’ve searched the net to no avail and the two numbers i did find (1800 numbers) did not work.  Can you help with that at all?

thank you so very very much.

[selondon]

Hi again,

Yep, I think you are going to need some kind of Adobe tech staff to have a look at this, as even writing it down I cannot figure out why the Cloud has 55 Photos, yet the Cloud Storage seems full.

Lightroom CC for Desktop | Photoshop Family Customer Community is monitored by the Lightroom engineers, so create a thread there and hopefully it will be picked up.

Be as concise as possible, explaining your devices, the cloud storage state on each (should be the same on CC for iPad Pro, iPad, iPhone, CC Desktop and CC Web) and also the traditional Lightroom versions you have on the Desktop (Classic and Lightroom 6).

And briefly explain your workflow.

Two more questions I have are, does the Cloud Storage Quota read the same on all forms of CC (iPad Pro, iPad, iPhone, CC Desktop and CC Web)... as an example click the Cloud icon at http://lightroom.adobe.com.

Also, what exactly is your workflow when Archiving to Dropbox........from where? The Lightroom Classic Catalog on your Desktop?

And nope, ACPs aren't employed by Adobe, you'll see the Staff badge for employees.

Good Luck at the other Forum. I expect with that last nugget of information regarding the Sync File there may be a chance that one of the more knowledgeable Classic may figure it out here.

[selondon]

Actually, when you create a thread at the other forum make sure you also tick the Web and Mobile checkboxes in the Related Categories section.

[Guest]

Hi, I just wanted to say thank you again.  I was up until about 2am last night trying to back up everything, and I’m so sick of this.  It’s taken three days of my life so far and I’m really thinking of just cancelling and trying to find something else I can use .  This has actually been traumatic.

Anyway, I thought I’d just let you know where I was at.  I can’t deal with even thinking about doing anything today but wanted to thank you for all your help and caring - it’s truly beyond what is expected and I still can’t understand how Adobe can get away with not paying someone to do this.  In fact, that’s another reason to change, it’s usury.   You have a great day, and year.  Thank you.