How to recover lost keywords?

[joseph motto]

In the process of uninstalling and reinstalling LR 6 my keywords all disappeared. I had a very large number and have no idea if it is possible to recover them or not and, if so, how to go about it.

[dj_paige]

Uninstalling/reinstalling would not cause your keywords to disappear. So perhaps you did something else after you re-installed. Did you? Please tell us what you did after you re-installed. Please tell us lots and lots and lots of details about what you did after you re-installed. Leave nothing out. For example, did you open a new catalog and import all your photos?

[joseph motto]

It is very difficult for me to tell you everything I did as I found the reinstall confusing (see my last posting). Ultimately I was able to bring up my Pictures files in LR 6 but it only consisted of about 40% of the images that I  currently have in LR. It appeared that this represented my catalog of several years ago as the only backup I had in my desktop was from that time; since then I have always backed up to an external drive. I did note, however, that I did have a limited number of keywords. I then went to my latest backup of my catalog dated 4/30/17, copied it, and pasted it into my desktop main drive. From there LR 6 finally opened with all of my images but absolutely no keywords at all.

[F. McLion]

Reinstalling did not touch your latest and most current catalog. You need to open this catalog and not some backup.

Search for *.lrcat files to find the catalog you used before the reinstall.

Why did you reinstall in the first place?

If you had LR set to automatically save to xmp, then the keywords are stored in the catalog as well as to the xmp sidecar files. You need to have either one to recover the keywords.

However, the focus is to find and use the catalog you used before removing and reinstalling.

[joseph motto]

I understand what you are saying here. I would have thought that when I copied and pasted the catalog backup and opened it the keywords would be with it. Apparently that is not the case. I so far have been unable to find the original file. Can you give me some idea as to where I might look for it (my Desktop OS is Windows 7)? If you posted a screenshot of where yours is located would that help me to follow suit to find mine? I am encouraged to hear that they are not forever lost.

[joseph motto]

I have done a complete search and I find no .lrcat file other than an old one from LR 4 several years ago and the current one that I pasted from my EHD backup. I have not saved or backed up to my main drive when exiting LR, only to the EHD. Apparently in that process the keywords do not go along so it would appear that I am toast as far as recovering keywords, correct? And going forward I am not willing to re-keyword all my images as it would simply take too long; I will simply stop using keywords unless someone has a way to yet retrieve them.

All of those dated between 5/23 and 5/26 are the copied EHD backup. Those earlier were LR4 from a couple of years ago. I cannot find a  recent file.

[joseph motto]

For anyone who followed this discussion I finally (with help) found the answer: Windows>Panels>Keyword List brought back my keywords.

[F. McLion]

Oh, the list panel was hidden ... that was a misunderstanding then, because I was in the believe that there were no keywords shown in the Keyword List panel nor in the Keywording panel. A screenshot would have made the very clear pretty quick

[DML51]

Slightly different problem, same generally: I was forced to re-install LRC (along with everything else including Windows) when my computer froze up because I was stupid enough to use freeware to try to install driver updates. Anyway, Lightroom runs fine now, but when keywording the first images since the reinstall, I found none of my old keywords coming up. So, apparently I need to port in the old list. I searched for *.lrcat and got a list of 65 files dating back to 2017 (see image). I really have no idea what to do next. Or, how to retrieve my keywords safely without loss. Any suggestions are very welcome. Clearly I have never run into this issue before, and I don't know why I have so many lrcat files and which can be safely deleted.

[GoldingD]

1. You are posting in a six year old discussion that related, yes to keywords, but to old v6 perpetual, while you are on LrC v12. Normally many members would either ignore this posting, or ask that you repost in your own discussion. You probably should. But a few points just jump out that you should think about. So I will bring them up anyhow.

2. At first I looked at your screen capture and wondered why the heck your catalog is on your boot drive C instead of one of the SSD drives that are not C. BUT that appears to be a false occurrence, that in fact the catalogs are on your One Drive, that is, the Cloud. That is a very bad practice that Adobe does not support, it eventually fails. If you relocate the catalog to an actual physical hard drive, what happens?

3. Why so many apparently older catalogs. Are they different photos, or actually earlier versions of the same catalog, same photos? Ok, this point may be a lot OCD, but might be helpful, file structure wise, as to clean that up as to avoid confusion .

4. And this point may relate to the previous point. Due ll that is in that One Drive "folder" many of the associated files/folders that go with the catalog in question are not shown in the screen capture, probably below the fold. If all that other info was not in the way, they would have probably been visible in the screen shot. Wondering what has gone missing.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

You’ve posted to a very old thread. It is highly unlikely that the issue described in this thread, though not impossible, is the same issue which you are currently experiencing. Rather than resurrect an old thread that is seemingly similar, you are better posting to a new thread with fresh, complete information including system information, a complete description of the problem and step-by-step instructions for reproduction. 

In the unlikely event the issue is the same, we will merge you back into the appropriate location. 

Thank you!