# Syncing issues



## rctneil (Dec 4, 2016)

Hey,

I have posted about this asking for help on Twitter but thought posting it here wouldn't hurt.

So, the scenario:

I had LR Mobile sat uploading photos that it had auto imported as I took photos during a day out. It had around 600 left to go.

At the same time I had LR desktop open and it was syncing down the files into a collection one by one as the phone uploaded them.

I mainly use LR Mobile as a way to get photos from the phone to LR Desktop and rarely from desktop to phone.

All of a sudden, LR Desktop crashed, returned me to my desktop. I reopened LR and now get the following error:

*This appears to be a duplicate or automatically created backup of your catalog.  As it may not be current, sync has been disabled for this catalog.  Please open your production catalog to resume sync.*

*To make this your sync catalog, go to: Lightroom > Preferences > Lightroom mobile and click the “Delete All Data” button to start fresh.
*
I only have one catalog and it's the one that opened at startup. It IS my production catalog and I just want to re enable sync on it. I can't "Delete All Data" as I have photos in LR cloud that have not been synced back to LR desktop.

I know Victoria is looking into a solution but I thought it wouldn;t hurt to post the full story here as well.

Kind regards,
Neil


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## Victoria Bampton (Dec 8, 2016)

Hi Neil

I couldn't say anything until 2015.8 was released a short while ago. It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than nothing...


Go to File menu > New Catalog and create a new temporary catalog.
Turn on Sync - it should ask whether to switch to syncing this catalog - say yes.
That'll sync down the stuff "from the cloud" which will get your phone photos safely onto your desktop. 
Check the links to the photos - if you'd moved some photos since initially syncing, they might be marked as missing. I'd fix or remove those photos.
Then open your normal catalog and go to File menu > Import from Another Catalog and point to the temporary one.
Let it import - I'll leave you to read the dialog and decide how to handle the ones it thinks are existing photos that have changed.
Once you're done and you're happy that everything's safely on your computer, then Delete All Data and re set up sync in your main working catalog and let it upload stuff again.
It's not a perfect solution - I put in a request for some further improvements today - but it does mean you shouldn't lose anything, other than the time it takes to upload again when you're done.


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## rctneil (Dec 8, 2016)

Fantastic!  Will give that a go!  Most likely be early next week as I'm away this weekend!


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## rctneil (Dec 19, 2016)

So, This worked perfectly (apart from a couple of minor issues) 

LR would not let me use the Delete All Data feature after the update to the latest version. It just told me it would download a copy of all the synced data just to be on the safe side. It has ended up with a ton of duplication but I am well on the way to clearing it all out and getting things back together again.

I very very much appreciate all your help!

Kind regards,
Neil


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## Victoria Bampton (Dec 22, 2016)

Thanks for the update Neil. There's definitely still some work to be done, as the catalog/cloud priority is kind of the wrong way round, which makes it a lot trickier.


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## rctneil (Dec 22, 2016)

Definitely!  I really appreciate your help though!!!  This is a great community to get support from.


Edit: Sorry about all the duplicates of this post yesterday. My connection on my phone was terribly intermittent and it showed an error rather than telling me my post had actually been posted!

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