2022 Elements Organizer Lost Catalog

[csrredcoat]

Hi, I have no idea how, but when I opened Elements Organizer today on my Macbook, it was empty. I have had varios versions of Elements for many years and have several thousand photos, well organized and tagged. May hours of work. My photos seem to all be intact in my photos library. I have a backup from not too long ago, but I was wondering if I can use Time Machine which is more recent to get everything back? 

What would make my catelog dissapear? I just used it a couple days ago and it's really bugging me how this could have happened. Any ideas? 

Thank you in advance to anyone responding 🙂

[Greg_S.]

I know nothing about Macs, so I will ping @Jeff Arola, another Community Expert, to help you.  I seriously doubt that your catalog has been lost.  But I would avoid using Time Machine until we hear back from Jeff.

[csrredcoat]

Thank you 😁 👍 

[Jeff Arola]

Have you looked in

Macintosh HD/Users/UserName/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Elements Organizer/Catalogs

to see if the catalog is still there?

[csrredcoat]

Hi Jeff, (and Greg) Thanks for responding. I had a backup from several months ago that i ended up restoring, then added back any missing photos since then. I navigated to that directory to know where it is for any future issues. I definitely would not have deleted that, so if it was gone, that is a mystery as to how. All I know is when I opened Organizer, everything was blank, not a single trace of anything I had. If that file was missing or damaged, if I was able to retreive it from a Time Machine backup and restore it from there, do you think that would have worked? Just curious.

The only recent things I've done was uninstall Final Cut Pro Trial, installed the paid version, and installed FX Factory and Photo Montage 3. I have been working on FCP projects and deleting a lot of videos from projects etc, but no idea how my Photoshop Organizer was lost. I will be doing more frequent backups from now on 😁

Thanks again and have a great day!