# Lost Collections



## msmack (Apr 28, 2019)

Helping a friend today.  Hope I didn't make a mess in his catalogue.  We were playing around with learning how to sync his photos from his iPhone to his LR Classic CC on his desktop.
In looking at his synced folder on the  Desktop CC, we decided to delete everything that was in the synced folder as he had no idea how they got into his Classic CC, (Probably from some other time fooling around), over 4000 images.

When we deleted that synced folder it seems we lost all his collections in Classic CC on his desktop.  Is there a way to get back his collections.?


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## PhilBurton (Apr 28, 2019)

Backup?


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## Califdan (Apr 28, 2019)

some inconsistencies in your problem statement.  first, you cannot sync a folder so i assume you mean the folder LR created to hold images passed to Classic from one of the LR CC (cloud based) apps.  Deleting that folder or the contents of that folder using the Folder panel in LR Classic is in deleting the original master images which will cause them to also disappear from any collection they happened to be in, including collections synced with the cloud which will in turn delete them from the cloud as well.  However, the collections themselves should remain albeit some may be empty.   Is this what happened?

If so, the deleted folder or deleted images from that folder "may" be in your Recycle Bin (Windows) or the Trash (Mac).  if so, restore them back to their original location and revert to the last backup copy of the LR Classic Catalog prior to deleting the folder.  If not in the trash or recycle bin, and you are using Time Machine (mac) or File History (Windows) you may be able to recover that folder or images using those tools.  If that doesn't help, you may have to restore from some other backup of that folder you may have taken before you did the delete.   If you are able to recover those images using any of these techniques, you will have to go back to a backup catalog taken before you lost the folder if you want those images to return to their prior collections.   Just re-importing the images will not repopulate the prior collections. 

If none of this reflects your situation, can you please provide more detail of what you did and what tool you used to do it  (for example, if you deleted folder "X", did you do that in the Folder Panel in LR or outside of LR?


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## msmack (Apr 28, 2019)

Thank you for getting back to me.  I can get you more info tomorrow.


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## msmack (Apr 30, 2019)

Looks like the syncing had nothing to do with the lost collections.  Back to square one.   The Adobe tech said that a using a backup would not restore the collections.   So, what could have happened to cause all the collections to disappear.  The names of the Collections are there but there are no images in any of the many collections.   The images are still in the folders.  Any advice?


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## clee01l (Apr 30, 2019)

msmack said:


> The names of the Collections are there but there are no images in any of the many collections. The images are still in the folders. Any advice?


 First,  some understanding about collections and folders.    Images are stored in folder on the disk drive by the filesystem.  They can only be located in the filesystem (path)  Collections are "virtual" containers designated for some images. Manually if placed there by the user, automatically if a Smart Collection is created (i.e. "All of the images with a red label").  You assign a collection container to an image.   Every image in a Collection has a location in the file system that corresponds to a folder (path) in the filesystem.   You live at some address in your city.  (that is your folder).   You might be a member of a local camera club. (That is your collection that you share with other photographers in that club.
If you drag an image into a Collection, it will still be located in the filesystem folder where it was placed by the filesystem initially.   If you drag or remove an image from the collection it is no longer assigned to that collection.

Regular collections are de-populated by removing images from the collection.  Having done this, there is no other way to determine what images might have been in the collection at some point in the past.  A Catalog Backup is a snap shot of how things were in the past.   If you have a backup of the catalog that represented the state of the catalog BEFORE you started messing around with it, you can reconstruct the collections and the members in this collections.   Phil asked about a catalog backup. So, do you have a catalog backup?   The Adobe Tech either did not understand your dilemma or simply gave you bad information.


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## msmack (Apr 30, 2019)

I am helping someone else and I don't have access to his computer.   Finally we were able to find the Backups. He does have a backup on 4/24.   He will call Adobe and ask them to restore from that point.   Personally, I do have a good understanding of folders, files, collection, keywords, stars, etc.   I don't know why they told him they could not restore the collections.


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## prbimages (May 1, 2019)

Your posts here are very confusing. First you say "we lost all his collections". Then later you say "The names of the Collections are there but there are no images in any of the many collections."

So, are the collections still there, or not? Your second statement indicates that they are.

Since you admitted to deleting over 4000 images, it is not surprising that you have images "missing" from some collections. If you delete an image, it is gone, and won't appear in any collection it was previously a member of.

It sounds to me that you deleted some images that should not have been deleted. You can get them back from a backup (not a Lightroom backup, which only backs up the catalog, not the images themselves).


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## msmack (May 1, 2019)

sorry for the confusion.    The names of the Collections there, but the Collections are not populated.  They all show zero images.   I think it happened when I deleted the synced images from the All Synced Images Folder at the top of the Folder Panel.     The iPhone is automatically syncing every picture that is taken with the iPhone to the All Synced Images Folder.  There were 4000 images in that folder that he did not want.   None of those images were in any Collections in the Collection Panel.  Those 4000 images were NOT the images he has in his regular folders in the folder panel.  The regular folders are the images he used to populate his Collections.  The images in those folders remain intact.

I am unsure WHY deleting the synced iPhone images would delete his collections information.

We were able to find his latest backups so I think Adobe will be able to help restore what the catalog looked like before I did anything.


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## clee01l (May 1, 2019)

msmack said:


> He will call Adobe and ask them to restore from that point. Personally, I do have a good understanding of folders, files, collection, keywords, stars, etc. I don't know why they told him they could not restore the collections.


Why would you (or him) use Adobe tech support to restore the collection?  They after all were the ones that said this was not possible.   The process is a simple one.   If the backup catalog file is one from just before the snafu, then it can become the master catalog  and no work is lost from before the snafu.  If the backup catalog file is older and catalog revisions would be lost by reverting to the backup catalog file, then it is necessary to reconstruct the collections in the current master catalog file using collection information in the backup catalog file.


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## msmack (May 2, 2019)

I have never restored a catalog before.  I felt safer using the Adobe Tech and it was not the same one who gave me the wrong information.  Reconstructing the Collections was going to be a long arduous job.  Turns out the Adobe Tech was very helpful and the Collections have been re-populated.
Thank to all on this Forum for the time and help.


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## PhilBurton (May 2, 2019)

msmack said:


> I have never restored a catalog before.  I felt safer using the Adobe Tech and it was not the same one who gave me the wrong information.  Reconstructing the Collections was going to be a long arduous job.  Turns out the Adobe Tech was very helpful and the Collections have been re-populated.
> Thank to all on this Forum for the time and help.



Nice to read that you were able to recover your collections.  For future reference, I hope that you will do a catalog backup each time you exit LR and a separate catalog daily (as part of overall backups) outside of LR.

 What actions did you take to accomplish this reconstruction?

Phil


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## msmack (May 4, 2019)

PhilBurton said:


> Nice to read that you were able to recover your collections.  For future reference, I hope that you will do a catalog backup each time you exit LR and a separate catalog daily (as part of overall backups) outside of LR.
> 
> What actions did you take to accomplish this reconstruction?
> 
> Phil


The reconstruction was done by the Adobe Tech Support.  We did have a fairly recent backup.  we were set up to backup weekly but I have now changed it to backup daily.  I can always choose, not to backup that day.


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## PhilBurton (May 5, 2019)

msmack said:


> The reconstruction was done by the Adobe Tech Support.  {stuff deleted}


Do you remember the steps that the Adobe support person performed?  Can you write them down for us, even if the list is incomplete, it may provide help to others.

Phil


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## msmack (May 5, 2019)

Sorry, I wasn't there when my friend called Adobe.   It was a matter of going to the last back up and reconstructing the catalog from there.
I believe some of the gurus on this forum know how to do that.


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