Trying to recover catalog

[essthree]

I accidentally deleted my lightroom catalog. It's gone since I emptied the recycle bin and all. All my photos are still on my HD. I've asked Lightroom to open what appears to be the most recent catalog file on my laptop. I get an error:

'This appears to be a duplicate or automatically created backup of your catalog. As it may not be current, sync has been disabled for this catalog.

To make this your sync catalog, please relaunch  Lightroom and enable sync'

However, I can't find out how to 'enable sync'.

I'm not trying to use Lightroom on a mobile or other device. I just want my photos to appear in lightroom in their folders like they used to.

What exactly is Lightroom asked me to do?

Cheers,

Sy

[Tony_See]

Did you make a backup anywhere in you work flow?

[JohanElzenga]

Lightroom tells you that it has detected that you are using a backup catalog. Since that is indeed what you do, there is no problem. You had sync enabled in the original catalog, and if you enable sync with this one, then all the images will sync again because you can only sync one catalog. That's why you get this warning.

You don't have to enable sync at all. First, check that this backup is indeed the newest one you've got and see if there is any work you need to redo. When you do want to enable sync, it's the little arrow behind the name plate (the arrow appears when you hover the cursor over it).

[Just Shoot Me]

What EXACT version of LR are you using?

With older versions you can open older backups as they are just COPIES of the catalog file.

With LR 7 (Maybe LR 6/CC 2015 at some point) LR started compressing the backups of the catalog file making ZIP files and it first needs to be Un ZIPPED, decompressed, before you can open them.