Lost folders

[bunkieboy]

I have Lightroom 5. I recently imported 3 photo shoots from my Canon camera, the only three folders for 2017. I use an external drive to put my photos on and I back up the photos with an additional hard drive----a "make second copy to" drive. I made a collection out of two of the folders and exported them not to my hard drives, but to a thumb drive, The export was successful. But now I can no longer find any 2017 folders in lightroom,(2016 shows up) or any listing of the collections that I have recently made..I have checked my hard drives and the folders are there, but nothing I can do gets them to show up in light room under library or anywhere else, (I think) Also, no listing of my "make a second copy to"---my backup drive---- shows in light room.

When I go to "open recent" there are two files listed with the file names I gave them and an ircat after them. There's no "catalog" listed in the information about the files and one of my files that I imported recently, but did not make a catalog of, is missing. When I click on the listing of these files, it asks me if I want to relaunch using the USB drive I exported the collection to. I'm afraid to do this.

How do I find my lost files and get my second drive to show in LR and just for the record (this is a secondary question) is it safe to relaunch at anytime or does that lead to screw-ups.

Thank you,

Al Marotta

[ManiacJoe]

Since your menu for "open recent" has multiple catalogs listed in it, you should open each one and verify that you are not just looking at the wrong catalog.

The files with the LrCat extensions are your Lightroom catalogs.

When you did the export, did you choose "export" meaning to let your edits be seen outside of Lighroom by creating new JPG files to contain your edits?

Or did you choose "export as catalog"?

Your back up of the original files will never be referenced by Lightroom because they are the emergency backup and should only be restored from in an emergency.

[bunkieboy]

I thank you, desperately, for your reply, ManiacJoe. I'm still very confused. My main concern is why all of a sudden three folders, imported on various days in 2017, are no longer listed under all my listings of 2016 in the left side of the screen under my external drive's listing.And there's no listing of the collections.

Of the "open recent" menu listings, the two collections I made are listed as  Nameoffolder ircat.  The rest of my recent catalog listings, none of them from 2017 and none of them collections,, list as "nameofffolder lightroom5ircat". When I click on collections listing, they say to relaunch using the thumb drive I exported them to. When I click the others, they also say I should relaunch (thought not to the thumb drive). Is it safe to relaunch (I can't find the word in my instruction books) and is it safe to relaunch from a thumb drive? And what will opening these files accomplish?

As for exporting the collections, I think I used export as catalog.

[dj_paige]

Part of the problem seems to be that you have way too many catalogs. Most of these problems disappear if you have a single catalog.

I agree with ManiacJoe​, you most likely have opened the wrong catalog. If File->Open Recent doesn't find the right catalog, then you need to use your operating system's search feature to search ALL of your hard disks for files whose name ends with .LRCAT (not .ircat) and double-click on each one found until you find the one that has the photos/collections of interest.

[bunkieboy]

Thanks for your help, Mr or ms Paige. I relaunched all my catalog listings and found all the files I wanted but one.I was unaware that I was creating more than one catalog. I thought that when you imported pictures into your external drive and you sent them to one folder, you were not creating a new catalog. Do you have by chance a sentence or two on commons mistakes regarding importing and creating unnecessary catalogs? Or is it something that is explained obviously and clearly in instruction books?

Thank you,

Al Marotta

[dj_paige]

The only thing I can tell you is that sometimes people create new catalogs by accident. This would not happen in the Import step, but rather when you launched Lightroom you got the wrong catalog or a new catalog, or perhaps you accidentally selected the menu command File->New Catalog. Beyond that, I don't really know how people accidentally create new catalogs.