All my work is missing from my collections

[creativeunlimited]

I don't know WHAT I did, but I just finished editing through 5000 images after like 3 days and I was exporting, when I realized I needed to fix a keyword on some of the photos, so I stopped the export ONLY 20% in, and went in and selected the keyword to see which photos it was on, and then I corrected it, but then I see NONE of the photos in all the collections I created.  So I fiddled with the keywords like maybe a filter or something is limiting my view, then I tried undoing, but I may have gone past my undo point.  Please HELP ME!  Is there a way to Go back to a certain time this evening?  Like autosave (like with FCPX)??  I closed the collection and opened another and then came back thinking maybe the filter would be gone (mistake right??).  I don't understand WHAT I did, but I'm hoping I didn't remove all the photos from the collections.  All the collection folders are still there, they just say 0 next to them.  Can I use the lcrat journal or some SQL editor to go back to that action??? Can anyone help??? Please.  The edits are all done, it's just the cull essentially that I need to get back to avoid having to go through ALL the photos again to select my favorites.

[Theresa J]

What type of collection did you create? Is it a smart collection or a regular collection?

How did you cull the images? Did you flag or rate them first, and then add them to the collection?

Did you really have 5000 images in a single collection? You say “all of the collection folders are there but they say 0 next to them”. Were you working in one collection or multiple collections?

Maybe you can share a screen capture so that we can see what you see.

[creativeunlimited]

There is the screenshot.  I would add images to my quick collection, and then save those quick collections, in this case for each kid. This was a school photo session at my kid's daycare, so like over 100 kids. I took WAY too many photos, but with some kids squiggling and worming, and this being my first time doing school portraits, it's tough. Anyway, I shot manually and that made the editing rather easy (except for some touchups), and all the photos are still in the catalog, and all the edits and keywording still complete.  I keyworded for each kid their last name and the class they're in.  I did this for the whole set of photos, not just the ones I saved to each individual collection.  I don't KNOW if I hit delete.  I feel like it had something to do with changing that keyword, but it looks like I MUST have accidentally hit delete with all the collection images selected. I'm afraid I have to do all those pic selections again, and I'm already so short on time and behind with other projects.  It's SUCH a huge disappointment, and it absolutely SUCKS that this software is not continually just autosaving like my FCPX software, so worse case I lose a few minutes work.  There are no backup catalogs created.  Is there truly way to go back to that moment and undo whatever I did?

[creativeunlimited]

Another screenshot with "All Photographs" selected.  This one is filtered, so I could only show my kid.  Edits and keywords still there.  I think I will be flagging images too from now on, and also saving a backup catalog before exporting, and along the way.  Never had a problem before.  I don't normally keyword though.  Keywording was done for the gallery site so parents could just find their kid.  Man, what a pain in the ass.

[Just Shoot Me]

A Collection is just that. A Collection of images, A LIST of Images. It is not the real images.

All your edits are saved to the Catalog file (and or to a Sidecar XMP file if you have that option checked in the Catalog Setting dialog window) so all you edits are still there.

Deleting a collection and or removing images from a collection does not remove the image from the LR catalog file or from your hard drive. So all those images are still on your drive and in the LR catalog file.

Same goes for removing a keyword or keywords from an image.

So go to the folder or folders the images are store in. If in multiple folder you can select all those folder individually, if they're not contiguous, by holding down the Ctrl or Command key, Windows/OS X respectively, and all the edits you have done will be there.

[creativeunlimited]

Everything you said is already understand. I have shown the empty collection, and shown that all the photographs are still there in the screenshots above.  I know I have not lost all the editing work, or the photos, but merely my selections for the collections. However it was time consuming and I was hoping to be able to rescue them from my mistake.  I'm going through it now quicker since all the edits are already done, but I was really hoping somehow to be able to go back and undo deleting them accidentally to save myself all this time.  It's still crazy to me that can't be done.  Adobe should totally steal that function from FCPX, project is continually backed up while working, so every few minutes.  I know Lightroom saves as it goes, but there's no way to restore to a previous point in time without the backups.  I'll be more careful and start flagging photos that were culled too to protect myself from myself, but still this would be a great option, the software's own time machine like backup.  I can see the history of changes to a google doc and go back to a version from months ago if I wanted.  I may not need to go back that far with a photo edit, but going back 5-10 minutes would have saved me hours!

[Theresa J]

Are you certain that each of those collections had images in them at some point? Is is possible that you only ever worked in the smart collection, which is a temporary collection?

Your collections are regular ones, not smart collections. There is no way that changing a keyword would remove images from those collections. The only way to remove the images from a regular collection is to select and delete. Then you should get a message asking you to confirm the delete.

Did you save a backup catalog before the images went missing? You may be able to recover the collections from a backup.

[creativeunlimited]

YES I am certain they had images.  Each time I create a quick collection for a kid I would save it and clear the quick collection for the next kid.  There were numbers next to all those individual collections before there were 0s.  Some had 4 some had 8, some had 15 (some kids have siblings so I put them all in one collection).

I had all the images selected for export, I cancelled export, then I went and found that keyword, saw about 67 images had that keyword, I corrected the spelling and hit enter, and then I don't know what happened. Maybe I clicked delete, but even at that point I feel I only had those 67 images selected that I was adjusting the keyword for, unless It didn't do what I thought it was doing.  I seriously DON'T get what happened, but it must be that with all images selected it was deleted.  I do not have any backups, I would have backed up after I exported, but nothing. I should do that more often.  Ughhh. I'm just going through it and culling again.  The edits are still there, the images are still there, unless someone can figure out a way to go back in time (either in software, OR in reality), I am stuck redoing this work I think.  I thought there would be some trick to go back to that action to undo whatever I did.  I need to up my level of undos based on this. does anybody know how to do that.  I tried it, but it stopped at a certain point before it fixed my problem.  Maybe it's only set to like 30 or something. Normally I don't need that, but I was clicking a lot of names and keywords trying to get it to reappear.  I waited too long to do undo.  SO weird, and SO frustrating.

[Just Shoot Me]

Close LR and Restart your system. Open LR and check. That is if you haven't done this already.

[NatureAsArt]

I also have the same problem. Opened up another catalog to work on and when I returned to my day-to-day catalog, all of the images collected in my collections are not linked.

How can I retrieve them? No flags are engaged and expanded all stacks.

[NatureAsArt]

I've tried to open four recent backup catalogs and get the error message "LR Cannot use the catalog named 2018 because it is not writable and cannot be opened. Checked file permissions and made sure User was given full permission edit/red, etc.

[Ed_13990]

I have the same problem.  I think it has to do with sync with Lightroom Room CC.  I have a lot of effort in building these collections and it grinds me it's all gone.  At first, I thought no problem, I'll go and restore a back-up.  Nope, no matter how far back I go, the collections are empty.  That's it for me using Lightroom CC, dumping it off all my devices, sounded like a good idea, but failed in implementation.  I'll stick with Classic on one machine.  And use Google Photos for sharing.  You don't have to beat me over the head to learn a lesson.

[joachims25232702]

I guess it is too late now, but the Undo button works great for problems with collections. I sometimes do something and then all photos are removed from a collection. I believe this is caused by the two different "select" signs. Select all photos in a collection makes them white, clicking on one of these photo then makes that super white. That is a recipe for problems as one can easily only mean one photo but all are still selected.