Unable to Upgrade Catalog from Lightroom 4.4 to 6.10

[Intothewild2013]

I have purchased standalone Lr 6 and updated to 6.10. When I try to upgrade my 4.4 Catalog I get the message "Lightroom encountered problems when trying to update the format of the catalog file and cannot use this catalog in this version of Lightroom". I have tried exporting the catalog from Lr 4.4 and importing to Lr 6.6 and this fails also. Is there a solution for this?

[JP Hess]

Do you have a recent backup that you could try?

[Intothewild2013]

I do have backups but it is a large file 550Mb and am having difficulty sending due to size. Will try again shortly.

[Intothewild2013]

Sorry I misread your message. Yes I do have a backup and will give it a try.

[Intothewild2013]

Tried the backup copy and get the same results. The process starts with Updating catalog file format, then optimizing catalog. This happens quite quickly ( a few minutes) it then continues with preparing new searchable data, this runs for more than an hour with the progress bar slowly creeping to the end. When it reaches the end that is when the error message shows up.

I also tried checking the catalog integrity and no errors were shown.

[bob frost]

Sometimes in the distant past, I've had problems with upgrading a catalog. The remedy in my case was to export my old catalog to a new catalog, and then upgrade the new catalog.. This has worked for me in the past by getting rid of rubbish in the old catalog during the export process - it gets left behind and doesn't upset the upgrade process.

Nothing to be lost by trying this; I would export the catalog without previews or anything else, and if the upgrade works, simply make all new previews for it. Best not to try and carry over old previews; make it a clean start with 6.

Bob Frost

[Intothewild2013]

Thanks for this but I have tried this already and the result is the same- it does not work.

[bhousto90]

In your old catalog in LR 4.4 run a missing photo check using the Library menu option:

Library -> Find all missing photos

A missing photo or series of them may be tripping up the conversion process?

Find or remove the missing photos and then try the conversion again.

[Intothewild2013]

Thanks for this. An interesting suggestion. I ran missing photo and it found 1 out of 50K(!). It comes up with a blank photo that is missing but in fact exists and is not blank. When I try to reconnect the photos I get an error message. So I tried to simply delete the blank photo but it will not delete. This may indeed be the problem. I shall have another look at this tomorrow and will get back to you.

[Intothewild2013]

You may well be onto something here. I have found one missing photo. The photo is shown as a blank grey photo with no metadata. If I try and delete the photo when I hit delete nothing happens. If I try and link it to a photo with the same name I get an error. An internal error has occurred bad argument #2 to ‘stringByAppendingPathExtension’ (string expected got number). I thought maybe if I removed the whole folder from Lightroom I could bring it back later but when I tried this I got the same error.

[bob frost]

Have you tried exporting all the other photos to a new catalog, leaving out the missing one?

Bob F

[Intothewild2013]

Not yet. I was thinking about something along those lines but with 50k of photos not looking forward to it! Will let you know.

[Rob_Cullen]

A comment on the suggestion from Bob Frost-  "Export ...to a new catalog"

It may not take as long as you think since you will not need to check the option to 'include negative files'

You are basically creating a copy of the catalog only, but you have all photos selected except for the troublesome one.

So choose "All Photographs" in the Catalog panel, Press Ctrl+A to select ALL,  Ctrl+L-Click on the problem image to deselect it, then menu File>Export as Catalog,  using the options as in this screen-clip.

Use the Desktop as a temporary location.Hopefully the 'new' catalog will open and convert.

Keep Bob (and us) informed how you go.

[Intothewild2013]

Still not working. Tried exporting from Lr4 to new catalog without the folder containing the troublesome photo. On importing to Lr6 the message was can not import. Will try a slightly different approach tomorrow.

[Rob_Cullen]

On importing to Lr6 the message was can not import.

Just to clarify your procedure-  You are just trying to OPEN the 'new' catalog you exported?

There is no "Import" involved in this process of upgrading a catalog.

If you did the 'Export to Catalog' and called it something like "New" it will appear as New.LRCAT  and you simply double-click on this  .LRCAT file to open it in Lr6. Hopefully the catalog update then occurs.

[Intothewild2013 · Accepted solution]

Just to be clear I was trying to Import as a catalog from the catalog exported from Lr4. This did not work. I then tried to open as a new catalog. After a longish delay I was back to the original error ‘Lightroom encountered problems when trying to update the format etc’ I have come to the conclusion that this just is not going to work! What does work is to go into Lr 4 write the metadata to file. Then In Lr 6 import the photos. Of course this does mean that all collections have to be manually reconstructed which is a pain. Thanks for everyone’s attempts to help

[Rob_Cullen]

My commiserations for your situation, and when programs do not behave- I agree- a real PITA.

The advice at- How to create and manage catalogs in Photoshop Lightroom  to "Upgrade a Catalog from an earlier version" is all good, but is found lacking when things go wrong. It would be nice to have better links for trouble-shooting on the 'help' pages at Adobe.

I hope you get your system up and running well.