# Keywords Suddenly Missing



## Ollie (Jul 17, 2014)

All my keywords have suddenly disappeared, on 100,000 images.  I must have done something inadvertently but don't know what.  Furthermore, when I try to type keywords into the keywords field, when I hit Enter they just disappear; they aren't accepted by the image file.  If I click on items in the Keyword Suggestions boxes they also aren't accepted, nothing happens.  The "Keyword List" starts with some numbers, then the "a" list on down to "Fuel", but shows no keywords after F.  I'm afraid to log out of Lightroom for fear of loosing all the keywords irretrievably.  Is there some other simple solution other than, I suppose, restoring the last saved backup catalog?


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## Victoria Bampton (Jul 17, 2014)

That's a weird one Ollie.  Can we see a screenshot?


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## Ollie (Jul 17, 2014)

Another learning opportunity!  OK, using the Snipping Tool to save screen shots as jpegs, I'm attaching two, hopefully: (1) Keyword Field empty, Caption OK and (2) Keyword List to FUEL.  Is there something else I could show you?


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## Victoria Bampton (Jul 18, 2014)

I think the lack of keywords below F is down to a windows limitation. If you type a later letter (i.e. G) in the search box at the top of the keyword list panel, do the G keywords reappear?  If so, that's your workaround for now - the alternative is to turn your loooooong list into a keyword hierarchy instead.

What I can't explain is why it's not letting you add new keywords.  Anyone else seen that?


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## Ollie (Jul 19, 2014)

I hope the screen shots (3-7) don't exceed the capacity allowed by the  Forum.  I've tried to illustrate what's happening.  First I selected all  thumbnails (DNGs and jpegs) in a folder, then typed a caption in the  Caption field, as in Screen 3.




It appears to accept the caption, but Copyright field changes from Copyrighted to Unknown.  See Screen4:




Next, select one image thumbnail to highlight (rather than the whole folder of images), and Caption field turns empty.  See Screen5.




Note that in all the above cases the Keywords field is shown as empty even though when images were uploaded (some weeks ago) a few keywords were assigned at the time.

Now I type a few new keywords into the Enter Keywords field.  This shows up white in the screen shot because the words disappear when I open the Snipping Tool.  See Screen6.  I tried this with all images in the folder highlighted and again with only a single image highlighted and got the same result.




Finally, to your point about the master Keywords List, when I type a letter into the search field the search does not take me to the first entry under that letter in the list but rather seems to find the first word where the letter appears (anywhere in the word), and then shows every word containing that letter anyplace.  I tried searching with several letters but to make the results obvious for the screen shot I searched for Q.  The list does show every word from A-Z that has a Q in it, so somehow, in some place, all the words seem to be there.  However, I have never made any use of this master list, so this does not seem very important to me.  I have on occasion used Keyword Suggestions, but since this problem first arose a few days ago they are no longer accepted into the keywords field.  I was working with the Keyword Sets feature when I first noticed that keywords were no longer being accepted.  Anyway, Screen7 shows the results of searching for "Q" in the Keyword List.





Obviously I cannot process any new images until I can caption and keyword them.  At this point I need to learn the best way forward to minimize damage and loss of data.  Many thanks for any help you can provide.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jul 21, 2014)

That's a weird one indeed!

Two questions:

1.  Is it just that folder? 

2.  What happens if you import those photos into a clean catalog - just temporarily, to see if it'll let you edit them there.  That would narrow it down to the specific catalog and give us a clue about where to start trying to fix it.


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## Ollie (Jul 22, 2014)

Nice idea.  Not sure what you mean by "a clean catalog".  Since this  problem arose last week I have not turned off or exited from Lightroom,  for fear I would lose something.  I've been wondering if I should just  shut everything down and re-start.   But for now, tonight, I imported  seven new images (of blue sky, taken recently to check for dirt on my  sensor) into a new folder into the LTR that's been running the last  several days.  I wrote some keywords (keywords, test, sky, blue, leaves,  clouds, sensor dirt test) before importing and LTR accepted them in the  import screen, but they did not show up in the new folder.  See Screen  8.






However,  when I opened the new files in PhotoShop my new keywords are there (See  Screen 9), but so also are a bunch of additional keywords that happened  to be showing in the Keyword Suggestions and Keyword Set fields,  although I did not intend for them to be assigned.  (Why would that  happen?)






When  I imported the new images I checked the box to have a dupe backup copy  sent to another EHD.  I see that they showed up there as CR2 files, not  DNGs (I think it's always that way; have never understood why).  But the  backup dupes have no keywords at all, neither the desired ones nor the  unwanted extras.  See Screen 10.  Note also that the Copyright Status entry changed from Copyrighted to Unknown.






One  final thought:  when this problem arose last week I was trying to use  the Keyword Set feature to save some time.  I've only done that a few  times before (prior to upgrading to LTR-5), and I wondered if I did  something wrong that has caused this whole problem.  Keyword Sets and  Keyword Suggestions are not features I'm used to using.  Probably  haven't even tried in the last year.  

And you asked if my keywording problem was only in the one folder I used in my screen shots 3-7.   No. It affects all folders.  I've got 100,000 images in LTR, in hundreds  of folders.  The captions show up, but none of the keywords do.   Hopefully they're preserved in the last back-up, which was probably July  17, give or take a day.

You must get bored sometimes answering  the same questions over and again in the Forum, but I'm not sure I take  any pleasure in coming up with one you haven't seen before.  But if you  can get me out of this without losing all my keywords, and restoring my  system to a state where it will again accept keyword input, I'll be  eternally grateful.  Best wishes.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jul 22, 2014)

Select everything and go to File menu > Export as Catalog.  Uncheck include previews and include originals and just let it export to another catalog as it stands right now.

Then restart your machine and let's hope they all magically come back.  It could just be a display issue.


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## Ollie (Jul 26, 2014)

I think I'm a bad student.  Before I could follow your suggestion I went looking for my catalog in my file tree and before I knew it I had exited from Lightroom.  When I re-opened LTR things started working normally again.  I've used it the last two days so far without the keyword problem returning.  All I can say is, it was a pretty serious obstacle to working, and I hope it doesn't recur.  Thanks for your advice.


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## dovbaer (Jul 27, 2014)

Interesting. Yesterday I couldn't get LR to respond to basic commands. As I was writing for help in this forum I decided to exit LR and re-open it. Everything re-appeared. You must have been quite panicked with 100,000 photos.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jul 27, 2014)

Amazing how often a program restart or system reboot solves weird issues.


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