Hi Colin,

Of course you are right!

The only thing which MAY result in only a few pages left in a book is if you have selected pages and deleted them.

Everything else I call a bug. Unpardonable in a mature software product.

Which the book module in LR 4.1 still is not...

Don't use it if you value your time & effort.

Stick to the proprietary software of your preferred printing agency and you will have another step in your workflow, but many more layout options and usually something pretty reliable.

Cornelia

I've had the same problem happen numerous times now, even after I updated to 4.1.
Though it does seem to corrolate with text being inputted into my book.
Soon as I started doing that, everything started to reset and dissapear.

To try and avoid this though I even created duplicates of my working book to avoid loosing it but they all came back as a blank template!
All the photos still say they are placed though. This is a massive bug and has wasted a good many hours of work.

It would be good to be able to save the book layout itself externally as a file type to avoid this.

The same for me. The books as collections are still there, the added photos are in the collections (I can see those in the bottom panel), but the books are empty. LR v4.1 cleared all the contents. I lost the layouts and all the text I wrote. Now, I can see empty covers and two empty pages. That's all.

I have a week old backup, so I can recover some parts, but I lost everything what I did in the last 7 days (LR offered a backup after emptying my books).

I think the 'create backup after every modification' (I can say every day) is not a solution. The bug is still there in the LR v4.1, please solve it.

No I only get the cover and two pages as well. If you want to replicate the bug try making multiple pages and input and decent amount of text on each one. Play around also with the adjustments to the text as well. Soon as I started working with text this happened.

I agree, it will be so bit hard and difficult to find the source of the problem. I wrote a PM to Brett about the screenshot, but I don't think it would help him, because the books look exactly the same when you start a new book (without using Auto layout). There are empty covers and 2 empty pages. As the books are empty, there aren't little numbers above the thumbnail photos, because the photos aren't in the books themselves. They are in as collection, but not used on any pages (because the books are empty).

And what it really interesting, I had two unfinished books. I worked on one of them, I moved a processed photo into the book I actually worked on and in the Library module when I clicked on the 'open book' arrow, LR switched to the Book module, opened the book, but it was completely empty (like when you start a new book). And when I clicked onto my another unfinished book, that was empty too! I did not do any modification in this second book, but LR emptied it too which is not good at all.

The numbers showing the allocations to the page are there still initally once the bug occurs, but they eventually dissapear once the 'book' realises that none of the pages have any photos now. Like I said using text was the only factor I could see that made the error occur. Can anybody say they weren't using text in their photobook and this happened still? double

This image attached is an example of what I would have had done on a page before it crash and lose everything
I'd have maybe 10 double page spreads like this. Always using that 2 image and 1 text box layout on one of the spread pages.
I believe it occured when I perhaps went to the develop module to edit a photo and come back.
When this happened the screen would go blank and I wouldn't be able to see anything in the book module, not even a blank layout. Just all the tool/menu bars around.
I would then have to restart lightroom and when it openned back up all books would revert to default state.

Colin, careful or not why would I even risk to use it if it might happen? No body wishes to do hours of work to lose it all.

Alright backing up every time I close can minimise the issue but it’s not efficient at all. But thanks for the suggestion I’ve changed my setting.

John I did duplicate the book to try and save it but all books become blank/default when this bug occurs. So it’s not a solution.