Catalog won't open after transfer from PC to Mac thru external

[sarahs24532298]

Hi! I'm having some trouble getting my Lightroom catalog to open on my new iMac and I'm hoping someone can help. On my old PC, I went to the folder where the Lightroom information was being stored (catalog, photos, exports, etc.) and copied that onto a WD hard drive that is formatted to work with both PC and MAC. Unfortunately, at the time I was not aware that I needed to also copy over the presets/preferences etc. so I do not have those. I have installed Lightroom on my new computer and the catalog will not open. The first time I tried it, it gave an error message saying something along the lines of: catalog can't open because it's opened in another application. I moved around some stuff and did a reboot and the next time I tried it I got another error message but this time is was along the lines of: catalog can't be opened because the file is not readable or writeable. I once again did some moving around, rebooting, and uninstalling/reinstalling and from that point on, every time I try to open it the program just "thinks". Nothing happens and all I see is the spinning colored wheel. I am able to open a blank/new catalog perfectly fine so I do not think it is the application.

I have also contacted adobe support who took the catalog and did something to it. That version will open but it is missing everything from this year. Is there anything at all I can do at this point? Does anyone know why this is happening? Is the file corrupt, and if so is there anything I can do to recover it? I really only need the files from this year so I am so heartbroken!

Thanks!

[JP Hess]

When you get the message about the catalog being opened in another application, you need to look in the folder containing your catalog and locate a folder with the .lock extension and delete that file. You either tried to copy the folder with Lightroom open or Lightroom didn't close completely or properly and left that file behind. I'm not sure what you moved around or what rebooting did. And I'm not sure what Adobe support did to your catalog. Do you have any recent backups that you can turn to? Of course, the files are not going to be in the catalog but rather in a folder on your old computer. If worst comes to worst you can copy those files to a flash drive and bring them to the new computer and import them to the new catalog on the new computer and start over with them.

[sarahs24532298]

I have tried deleting the .lock extension but that has not worked. This is the only backup I have. I do still have the photos but I was hoping to not have to re-edit them.

[Just Shoot Me]

When you say you deleted the .lock file and it "Didn't Work" (That Has Not Worked) what does that mean?

If there is a .lock file that means LR is opening and creating that lock file but is not deleting it when LR is shut down, if LR is actually shutting down, even IF you can't see LR on your screen.

[sarahs24532298]

Lightroom will "try" to open and create a new .lock file but it never loads. I then will have to force quit out of it. It only loads the inital screen that has all of the copyright info. It does not load the actual application. If I open it with a new catalog then it will open fine so it's not the application that is the problem.

[Just Shoot Me]

Please state the Exact Format of that external drive. To my knowledge the only formats that works on both Windows and OS X is either FAT32 or exFAT.

[sarahs24532298]

The format of the external drive is exFAT

[Jao vdL]

Try holding the option key while you start Lightroom. This should give you an option to check the catalog for corruption.

[Jao vdL]

Also make sure that your operating system is seeing the correct permissions on your external drive. This is  very common cause for issues such as this.

[sarahs24532298]

I have tried holding the option key to check the catalog for corruption but still nothing happens.

How do I make sure my operating system is seeing the correct permissions on my external drive?

[Jao vdL]

Do a get info i the finder on the catalog file and make sure it is set to read and write by yourself. Also check the enclosing folder and side folders. This should normally be ok but sometimes some permissions setting from windows seems to propagate to the Mac side while it shouldn't. You can also do a get info on the entire disk and set it to read and write by you and then make it apply to all enclosing folders.

[sarahs24532298]

Everything is set to read and write. I have also tried resetting the preferences with no luck. Thank you for the suggestions though.

[Jao vdL]

Oh and you might also want to reset Lightroom's preferences. You do this by holding shift-option-delete while starting Lightroom. After this you might have to reopen the catalog file on the external as it might default to a catalog file on your internal disk.