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Help please! Accidentally deleted catalogue (but not picture files)

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Elle Elle

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Hi All! I'm new here, but hoping for help...
Last night I accidentally deleted a massive folder within my lightroom catalogue - one containing loads of subfolders relating to images over the last 5 years, all ratings, keywords, edits, etc, etc. I meant to delete an empty subfolder within it, but somehow clicked the parent folder..and the whole directory is gone!

Does anyone know how to get this back? I realised what had happened immediately & tried clicking undo but to no avail. I can't believe that with one slip it can just be gone?! Surely this must still be stored somewhere??

Just to be clear - this has not deleted the images from the hard disk - just a big section of my actual lightroom catalogue.

..And..Unfortunately I have been bad about backing up the Lightroom calatogue itself - so backups are way way out of date (lesson learnt!)..so restoring a backup is not going to be a great solution if that's my only option.

Also to say I havent saved the catalogue since I did this, in the hope that there might be a way to go back to the version that I opened when I started the session? Don't know if that is possible though as it saves & updates the catalogue automatically when you close?

If anyone can help I would really appreciate it!! This is quite an old version LR5..
 
I'm afraid that the news is not good. You could try to use a recovery utility, or have a professional recovery service look at it, but the experience is that Lightroom catalogs usually cannot be recovered. You will get the catalog back, but then Lightroom will say it is corrupted and usually the corruption is beyond repair.
 
I'm afraid that the news is not good. You could try to use a recovery utility, or have a professional recovery service look at it, but the experience is that Lightroom catalogs usually cannot be recovered. You will get the catalog back, but then Lightroom will say it is corrupted and usually the corruption is beyond repair.

Oh no, really? That's crazy! Just seems ridiculous that you can delete something with one mouse click & not be able to get it back..
 
Oh no, really? That's crazy! Just seems ridiculous that you can delete something with one mouse click & not be able to get it back..

That's what backups are for... Don't you use Time Machine?
 
I accidentally deleted a massive folder within my lightroom catalogue
Let's clarify some terminology. Your LR "catalog" is a file on your disk drive usually located in a folder inside of the Pictures folder. (You can see this in Finder).
A "Massive Folder" probably refers to a pointer in the catalog to a system folder as shown in the LR Folder panel. If you right click on a folder in the LR folder panel and choose "Remove", you get a warning message. If you ignore this warning message, the reference (pointer in the catalog to a system folder) is removed from the catalog file and any imported images referred to by that folder reference is also removed from the catalog. Is that what you did?
If so, then the only reference to that folder and the images will be found in some prior backup catalog file. If such a backup catalog exists, it is possible to use the "Export as Catalog" function to create a small catalog containing the contents of that folder. Then the "Import from another Catalog" function can be used in the current master catalog to merge the catalog containing only the missing folder with the master catalog.
 
Can You remember the name of the removed folder? It could be just the previews.


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Let's clarify some terminology. Your LR "catalog" is a file on your disk drive usually located in a folder inside of the Pictures folder. (You can see this in Finder).
A "Massive Folder" probably refers to a pointer in the catalog to a system folder as shown in the LR Folder panel. If you right click on a folder in the LR folder panel and choose "Remove", you get a warning message. If you ignore this warning message, the reference (pointer in the catalog to a system folder) is removed from the catalog file and any imported images referred to by that folder reference is also removed from the catalog. Is that what you did?
If so, then the only reference to that folder and the images will be found in some prior backup catalog file. If such a backup catalog exists, it is possible to use the "Export as Catalog" function to create a small catalog containing the contents of that folder. Then the "Import from another Catalog" function can be used in the current master catalog to merge the catalog containing only the missing folder with the master catalog.

Thanks for this - appreciate the advice.
Yes it was a folder in the left hand panel, which related to one of my external hard drives. I will have to see what backups I have but have been travelling a lot & that schedule has been disrupted.. Annoying you can't undo this sort of action in the way that you would any other - I like Lightroom but that's not a great program feature.
 
Annoying you can't undo this sort of action in the way that you would any other - I like Lightroom but that's not a great program feature.

You should be able to undo that action, provided you haven't subsequently restarted Lightroom or done too many other subsequent in-session actions (I don't know what the maximum number of "undos" are per session, but I suspect there will be one). How many times did you use the undo option?
 
I like Lightroom but that's not a great program feature.
While we all from time to time make hasty decisions that can have disastrous results, Lightroom like all well constructed commercial programs recognizes this and provides a warning message box that gives the user a second chance before committing to something irreversible. You had to see this message and you should not fault Adobe Lightroom if you chose to ignore it.
2017-07-15_1657.png
 
You may be able to retrieve the files from the recycle bin, on Windows. I assume Mac had a similar feature.

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You may be able to retrieve the files from the recycle bin, on Windows. I assume Mac had a similar feature.

The title of this thread is misleading and wrong. I also was on the wrong track as a result of it. As I understand it now, the OP did not delete the catalog or a folder from disk, she deleted a folder from the Lightroom catalog. That is something you cannot solve via the trash can (recycle bin), because no folder was physically deleted. Just its reference in the Lightroom catalog was deleted. The only way you can solve that is by replacing your catalog with a recent backup. Or else you have to reimport these folders, but that means all your edits and added metadata like keywords are gone.
 
Oh no, really? That's crazy! Just seems ridiculous that you can delete something with one mouse click & not be able to get it back..
Except, that isn't how it works.

It takes two mouse clicks to delete something from the catalog. First you have to select to delete it and then LR displays a warning dialogue and you have to click to confirm. Even then you can get it back by using the Undo command. Not sure how long the Undo queue is but I was able to step back through 8 actions before I stopped, so even if you change modules and start doing something else you can still revert back. Yes, once you exit Lightroom your changes become final and can't be undone. But disasters like that are why Lightroom regularly prompts you to backup the catalog - prompts that you chose to ignore.

I realise it is frustrating when something like this happens but it is hardly bad software design. There is a limit to how many times software should need to ask "are you sure" and ultimately no system can't protect against a chain of mistakes and poor user decisions.

That's not to say that Lightroom is perfect. The default location for the catalog backup is a sub folder in the same drive/folder as your working catalog. That is very bad backup practice as a drive failure will almost certainly mean the loss of your working catalog and your backup. There is an option to change the location (during the backup process) and I would certainly recommend selecting a second/exterior drive as the location for this and ensuring that the backup process is run regularly.
 
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