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Folders disappeared in LR 5.7

New Here ,
Jan 02, 2017 Jan 02, 2017

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I was working on organizing my Folders in Lightroom.  I moved all 3 photos from the first folder in the Folders menu under Macintosh HD.  Then I deleted that Folder using Remove.  All the Folders disappeared.  The photos still appear to be present in All Photographs (I can't tell if they're all there, as I have about 25000 photos).  The photos are still in their organized state on the HD, including the most recent changes to the directory.  Their are relatively recent backups of the Catalog although these would not include the changes that I made today.  I am lost about what to do, although related questions seem to have been addressed and solved on this forum.

In the Pictures directory on my HD, there are two folders that contain all the images in the Lightroom catalog.  One is called LightroomMasters and the other is called Lightroom Library.  I'm not clear about this, but I guess that I created Lightroom Library for the photos but LR likes LightroomMasters.  Photos in my LR catalog include 1) photos that I imported into LR4 in a trial period (these were immediately brought into LR5.7 when I bought it); 2) photos that I imported from iPhoto using LR's iPhoto import; 3) photos that I've imported from my camera in the past two years; 4) some scans that I've brought in.  The Folder Lightroom Library appeared under the Folders header in LR, but I believe that the LightroomMasters Folder did not explicitly appear.  The Folder that I deleted to cause this problem was titled 2009-12-31.  This folder was the first folder in the LightroomMasters directory and was the only folder in the 2009 subdirectory.

Clicking on "Go to Folder in Library" restricts the filmstrip to show just the photos that were in that Folder and shows what I think is the correct name for the folder.  Perhaps that's the correct behavior if LR still knows about the Folder structure?

I'm completely at sea about what to do.  I have not restarted LR.  I am copying everything to a backup HD before I do anything.  Thanks for any help.

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LEGEND , Jan 03, 2017 Jan 03, 2017

If I were you, I'd first reboot the computer and see if that fixes the problem.

If that doesn't work, the easiest path forward is to restore the backup of your LR catalog. That's why you have backups!!

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New Here ,
Jan 02, 2017 Jan 02, 2017

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Perhaps I can go back to what should be a full backup of LR from 12-29-16.  Carbon Copy Cloner should have an exact copy of the LightroomMasters, Lightroom Library, and Lightroom folders and of the Lightroom Preferences file (/Users/David/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.Lightroom5.plist).  If I copy all these back to my Mac, will I restore Lightroom to its previous state, or am I missing something?

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LEGEND ,
Jan 02, 2017 Jan 02, 2017

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davidh87656067 wrote:

Perhaps I can go back to what should be a full backup of LR from 12-29-16. Carbon Copy Cloner should have an exact copy of the LightroomMasters, Lightroom Library, and Lightroom folders and of the Lightroom Preferences file (/Users/David/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.Lightroom5.plist). If I copy all these back to my Mac, will I restore Lightroom to its previous state, or am I missing something?

You also need a backup of the Lightroom catalog file. If you have that, then you can restore everything. If not, then you are wasting your time, you don't have all the pieces.

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New Here ,
Jan 02, 2017 Jan 02, 2017

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The Lightroom folder contains the Catalog (Lightroom 5 Catalog.lrcat), as well as the Previews (Lightroom 5 Catalog Previews.lrdata).  I'd still much prefer to be able to restore what does appear to still be present in LR, if somehow invisible.

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New Here ,
Jan 02, 2017 Jan 02, 2017

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The Folders portion of the screen looks like this:

screen1.jpg

where it appears that LR is trying to find the folder 2009-12-31 that I had just deleted.  I'm not certain whether this appeared immediately after I deleted the folder or after I tried something like Undo.  (I guess I'm wondering whether deleting the first folder in the list might be causing problems; I had moved photos and deleted the empty folders several times before I did it here and got this result.)

I'm editing in some additional information.  LR appears to have deleted the folder that I asked it to.  Here's a comparison of the current copy (left) with the backup copy (right):

Comparison of 2009 files.jpg

The folder 2009-12-31 has been deleted; the photos had previously been moved to another folder, so the folder would have been empty.  (This suggests that I actually hit the keys to do what I intended.)  This should, I suppose, then have deleted the subfolder "12" and the folder "2009" both of which are now empty.  (I believe this hierarchy comes from LR import from iPhoto.)  LR might not like something about all these folder deletions.

What I guess I'm going to try is

1. restarting LR in hopes that LR can figure it all out and restore normalcy.

2. deleting the LR preferences & restarting.

3. recreating the 2009 folder as it was before I started deleting in hopes that LR will recognize it, be mad about photos it doesn't know about, and allow me to connect them manually.

4. delete the 2009 folder on the assumption that LR doesn't need it and maybe doesn't think it exists.

5. copy everything over from my backup, and hope that restores normalcy.  (Because it's a CCC full-disk backup, I should be able to boot from the backup drive and test that LR is working before I spend hours copying.)

6. give up.

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LEGEND ,
Jan 03, 2017 Jan 03, 2017

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If I were you, I'd first reboot the computer and see if that fixes the problem.

If that doesn't work, the easiest path forward is to restore the backup of your LR catalog. That's why you have backups!!

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New Here ,
Jan 03, 2017 Jan 03, 2017

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Thank you for your responses, dj_paige.  I agree about restarting.  I'm not sure about restoring.  I guess I view it as the last alternative, because I have to restore everything (photos + catalog + prefs??).  The catalog backup doesn't refer to the current photos, since I made some small changes to the photo organization since the last backup.  I don't fully trust copying such large datasets without checksums, and I think those will be slow, but maybe my caution is misplaced.

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LEGEND ,
Jan 03, 2017 Jan 03, 2017

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So either way, you have some need to "re-construct" things. Then I have no preference, it's entirely up to you which way to go.

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New Here ,
Jan 03, 2017 Jan 03, 2017

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And the apparent solution is:  Restart Lightroom (after fretting for hours, posting on the Forums, and making every conceivable type of backup).  All the folders returned, are populated, and everything seems right with the world except that the Folders list has an unexpected first item:

screen2.jpg

I'm hesitant to Remove that grayed out Folder given what happened last time.  I believe that this notation means that LR is expecting to find 2009-12-31, which I had previously deleted concomitant with the disappearance of all the other folders.  So, should I try the dreaded Remove and hope for good things?

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LEGEND ,
Jan 04, 2017 Jan 04, 2017

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Why don't you just leave it there and ignore it? Or make backups of your catalog file and all photos, and then try to delete this folder?

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New Here ,
Jan 04, 2017 Jan 04, 2017

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dj_paige, I'll probably do something like your second suggestion, as I don't like leaving potential land mines in the catalog.  Thanks for your help.

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