No, a brand new catalog will not know about collections.

You could have a workaround if you still had your old system on the windows box in working mode, i.e. without any mess and ?s there.

Which you have not, if I understand this thread.

So maybe you will only arrive at new collections by redoing all this work from scratch.

What I would advise then, though, is to insure your future collections by a feature which can be written into xmp and thus travel along the image file:

For each collection define a keyword and put them under a parent key word called "redundant collection membership", so you do not clutter your keyword list on root level.

When you have created a collection, select all images of it and assign the relevant keyword, then cmd s to save this to your xmp-part of the files.

This would enable to easily recreate collections by importing into a brand new catalog.

It may be what Matt may have meant, but you seem to lack the prerequisite now.

Generally for all future: fingers off from finder or windows explorer once you use LR!

You do every move inside LR!

Cornelia

In my view you are really at the point where you've little to lose by starting anew. Thanks to everyone else who has tried, but we've all been asking similar questions and getting nowhere.

So what I would do now is use Finder to gather up all your pictures into one place, so you know you have everything. This can be under a single top level folder - maybe call it "Photos in Lightroom" . Start a new catalogue, and import that folder, selecting Add in the Import dialog.

You will lose Collections - Matt was either trying to get away from you or didn't know what he was saying.

And from now on, observe these rules - any pictures that are recorded in LR should only be moved using LR. That one is strict! Secondly, switch on the Catalog Setting to auto write XMP files. Third, use keywords and other metadata rather than collections to add the basic data that groups and categorises your pictures. See Collections as more of a reporting or gathering function, and use smart collections to find images meeting certain criteria. Learn from the experience and follow these rules!

Once everything is in this one new catalogue and your pictures all in Photos in Lightroom, clean up the rest of the mess using Finder. Maybe just drag it into one Big Mistake folder and see if you can forget it.

Either do this or get someone to help you. I know someone in Baltimore who could help himself or could find someone. Email me if you want his name.

John

Continued

Now, if the above doesn't appeal, look at the links in the bit I quoted below. You have lots of question marks on folders. As I said before, you could right click each of these - the folder and NOT the photo - and Update Folder Location. You may be able to point each folder to its current location, and that may reduce the 10000 missing photos to nil, but I'm not betting on it! You're probably better off starting again and following my rules.

"I will get a screen shot when i get downstiars..Oh wait....I have the same time machine backup here on my mac book pro with the same disaster. Here are the screen shots and it is far uglier that I ever envisioned now that I noticed the volumes in that panel... the second through 4th link are heineous long collumns of question marks of death as Matt referred to them....

http://db.tt/adoEoVTy

http://db.tt/gt4N1HUU

http://db.tt/hF0ag3Ka

http://db.tt/EVdpT6ZV

http://db.tt/BEMbGzlh

"

So where are those folders now?

When you import into Lightroom, all that happens is that Lightroom creates a link to the location of the files/folders....they are not IN Lightroom.

The vast majority of your 10000 missing images are the ones that were in the My Pictures folder structure on the C drive of your Windows PC. Simple question.....when you moved over to the Mac, did you copy those folders as well? Because if you didn't, that explains all your problems. But if you did copy them to the Mac, where are they? If you know, then you follow the instructions that John has repeatedley given you, right-click on the My Pictures folder, choose "Find Missing Folder" and in the resulting browser window navigate to the copy on the Mac and click OK.

Show me two things:

1. A screenshot from Finder which shows the location and folder hierarchy of the 2009 year folder (and individual dated 2009 sub-folders) which according to the Lightroom Folders Panel screenshot were on the network share \\Ls-lgl46f\share\

2. A screenshot from Finder which shows the location and folder hierarchy of the My Documents folders which according to the Lightroom Folders Panel screenshot were on the C drive of your PC

Those two folder structures account for almost 10000 of the 12000 missing files, so if you have kept the folder hierarchies identical when you presumably copied them over to the Mac then with two simple relink commands you have most of your catalog sorted out.

As you have 2 records for each image (one now missing with ?, one supposedly "good") you too must have done some action to reimport from the new storage destination, as did the other poster from your link. He did it by sychronizing a folder, you admitted in your reply no. 57 that you did, after the move to your mac.

These supposedly "good" ones are now your problem, because they do not know about collection membership, but they hinder you to re-associate the complete records with the proper file, which is indeed the same.

So the way out:

Remove (just REMOVE, not delete from disk!!!) the supposedly "good" specimens from your catalog, the re-associate, on folder-level preferably, the question marks. Which will work now, because there is no redundant record left to interfere.

If you did not change the folder structure underneath MyPictures between your windows box and mac box this should be fairly quick.

The challenge is to find the redundant images to remove them.

You cannot blame Adobe or LR for this situation, as it was of your own doing, in the wrong action to move LR from one computer to another.

Reimporting or synchronizing folders is always a bad idea, if you have data to loose in your catalog.

Once sorted out I would stress my recommendation again to use keywords for collection membership and display the collections then as smart collections.

Good luck, Cornelia

Hi Vincent,

This is my suggestion how to proceed from here. It is like heart surgery on your LR catalog, so even it is currently a mess, first start LR, set it to backup upon next exit, and exit. Tick "optimize cataloag" also, have a coffee while that lasts. LR now closed.

Then append the backup-catalog filename by MESS_StartingPoint. Just in case.

We should not do any deletions on file level, but again, cautious - could you empty your trash bin in Finder? So if you should make mistakes, you have only LR-stuff to recover in?

Now you should just label every entry in your LR catalog, before you actually DO anything.

If my theory is right, you have 3 categories:

1. ToBeFound (= the images in your collections, with the "?")
2. TooRecentForWindowsBox (=images whcih you may have imported after your move to the mac)
3. SuspectedDuplicate (=re-imported images as {wrong}part of the move, which hinder now that you associate the ToBeFounds to the correct image file on mac).

We need to identify and cull SuspectedDuplicates.

Then you should be able to re-associate on top-folder-level with a "?" to the equivalent top folder now on your Mac drive, and no more error messages and no more "?" afterwards.

So to do this labeling: first define the 3 keywords. If you have already a long and clean keyword list, start with a parent keyword for organization like "DisasterRecovery" and put the other 3 as child keywords. So you will not pollute your list and easily cleanse it afterwards.

To identify the ToBeFound you just run the command from All Photographs, then Library - Find Missing Photos again, put your cursor inside this new collection, select all, and apply the first keyword ToBeFound. If you do not use colour labels already for other purposes, you could as well mark them as "green", for easy visibility.

To identify the TooRecentForWindowsBoxs filter All Photographs for "Date is after <date of your move to mac>", select all, assign the keyword TooRecentForWindowsBox, and maybe treat them with another colour, such as yellow.

Now all the rest should be SuspectedDuplicates, so filter for "Keyword is neither ToBeFound nor TooRecentForWindowsBox". Mark them with the keyword "SupectedDuplicate".

Now have a hard look at them - this is the risk: you are going to remove their records from LR.

If there could be some among them which have another source, for which you can be sure that they do not overlap with any of the ToBeFound, swap their keyword for TooRecent... and mark them with e.g. violet, because if some of them should overlap, and you would get the "already associated error" again, you know where to cull more - from the violet ones.

Do a plausibility check in numbers: number of ToBeFound = number of SuspectedDuplicate ? If <, you should find candidates for violet. If > you know that you will not be able to get rid of all "?".

Best you take a break at this point and return with a refreshed mind to look again at all thumbnails keyworded as SuspectedDuplicate.

Would it improve your current mess if everything else would be ok, but these would be missing?

Then with All Photographs filtered for keyword SuspectedDuplicate, hit delete. In the dialog box, which asks for "Delete the selected photos from disk, or just remove it from Lightroom?" be sure to choose REMOVE.

We need the image files on disk, because now you are going to associate them with the "?".

So just for paranoid safety, check your trash can now in Finder - it should still be empty. If not, restore.

Then to re-associate the "?": to minimize workload this should be done on folder-level rather than on individual thumbnails.

So be sure to display all parent folders in folder panel. Go to the highest with a "?", right-click and point LR to the correct older on Mac, like you have done already so many times before. But now there should be no or just few exceptional "already associated" error messages (few in case your violet thumbnails still contain some overlaps. You may get a protocol for which files the reassociation was not successfull - store it, this is your work list for individual search).

Check for rate of success now:

Filter All Photographs for Keyword ToBeFound: any "?" left?

You could remove the green colour and the keyword ToBeFound for all which are without "?" now.

TooRecentforWindowsBox: should be unchanged in number. Cleanse the labels (keyword plus colour) at any convenient time when you deem the surgery over.

Now it is time to look inside your collections: hopefully next to none "?" left inside them.

If there are still some, check your protocol and look among the violet thumbnails, if there is a duplicate for one with a "?". Delete the violet one,  associate the "?" with the released image file. This might be a 1:1-work now, I am afraid.

Then backup your catalog again.

Quite generally I agree with you that error messages should not only give a correct technical statement, but some instructions in everyday language, too.

For this special case I would suggest: "Find the redundant thumbnail which points to the same image file and decide if to remove that or the thumbnail with the "?". "

Good luck, Cornelia