# Lightroom Classic Upgrade Failure!!!!



## juslaughter (Nov 2, 2017)

Operating System:Mac High Sierra
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info):Classic CC

Hi

First post from me and its a doozy!

Years ago I bought Lightroom 4 as a standalone product and is on my 27" iMac running High Sierra. Over the years it has been upgraded regularly to the most recent CC version.

This week I bit the bullet and ran the upgrade to CC Classic. I kept the old version as I had read that many were having issues. The upgrade appeared to have worked. When I open Lightroom CC Classic, it asked me to upgrade the catalog file. Part way through, it errored, and has done no matter how many times I try.

It says "Lightroom encountered problems when trying to update the format of the catalog and cannot use this catalog in this version of Lightroom."

Any suggestions as to what the problem might be? I don't want to lose 6 years worth of LR edits from over 5TB of images.

To add to that, for some reason, Chronosync has stopped backing up my catalog file, which again it has been doing quite nicely for the last 4 years or so.

Getting worried something bad is going to happen!

Thanks in advance.

Julian


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## tspear (Nov 2, 2017)

Julian,

I would hesitate for a Lr 4 to Lr Classic upgrade in a single jump.
There are links around for downloading a trial version of 5.7 and Lr 6. I would download both of those and do the upgrade in stages.
Starting by making sure you have a good backup first.

Tim


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## juslaughter (Nov 2, 2017)

Hi Tim

I think you misunderstand. I didn't go from 4 straight to Lr Classic, it has been upgraded as each release becomes available. The latest version I have for the original install in CC 2015.12


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## Hal P Anderson (Nov 2, 2017)

If Chronosync refuses to back up your catalogue, it sounds like the physical file has been corrupted. This is more than just containing bad data, but portions of the file are perhaps simply unreadable. You're right to be worried. The disk that contains your catalogue may be failing. 

Do you have a recent backup of the catalogue? If so, try opening that in LR Classic and see if it is able to convert correctly.


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## juslaughter (Nov 2, 2017)

Hi Hal

My LR catalog is backed up hourly so the only version I have is probably corrupted also. Thing is, I can still open the catalog in the 2015.12 release and it works fine, there are no missing images, etc.

Therefore, do I create a new catalog for the CC Classic version and migrate over?


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## Hal P Anderson (Nov 2, 2017)

So, you didn't try to upgrade a backup? Cheap and worth a try.


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## Hal P Anderson (Nov 2, 2017)

Also, if your backup ran while LR had the catalogue open, that backup could be in an inconsistent state. The recommended practice is to use the LR backup and then have your backup app backup _that._


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## juslaughter (Nov 2, 2017)

OK, tried a backup from 30th October, still get the same error when upgrading the catalog. I will try and older one.


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## juslaughter (Nov 2, 2017)

Tried an older backup, still the same. I can only assume that while 2015.12 release is OK with my catalog, CC Classic does not and therefore won't upgrade it. I can't go back any further as I added 350gb worth of images just prior to 19th and have made some heavy edits on quite a few of the images so don't want to lose those.

Any other suggestions?


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## tspear (Nov 2, 2017)

Just sanity check a few items:
1. Do you have Lr 6 open when you attempt to start Lr Classic?
2. How much disk space do you have available on the primary drive?
3. Let's check backup and restore of Lr 6 first. Make a clean backup, with Lr closed. Then backup Lr 6, then verify the backup works.
4. Select all images, select export catalog. The will create a new catalog, removing the develop steps but keeping the result. This ends up touching basically every record in the database, giving you a clean database. Try upgrading this export to Lr Classic.

Tim


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## tboydva (Nov 2, 2017)

This sounds similar to the problem I had... You might have a look at this thread. I'm on Win7x64, but perhaps if you export your entire catalog, then do import in Classic CC, it may work the same way?


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## juslaughter (Nov 13, 2017)

tboydva, tried what was suggested, got the same error about cannot upgrade the catalog. Looks like I'm either stuck with the old version, which means no upgrades or I start again with the new version and lose all my edits (


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 13, 2017)

If you keep getting this message with all backup catalogs, then the only option seems to be as follows: Open Lightroom CC2015, go to 'All Photographs' and select all your photos. Choose 'Metadata - Save Metadata to Files'. That will take quite some time. When Lightroom is done, quit and start Lightroom Classic. Don't try to open and convert an existing catalog, but create a new one. Then import all your image folders into that new catalog. Because you've saved the metadata to XMP files, all your keywords, captions, edits, and any other metadata will carry over to this new catalog. The only thing you will have to re-create are all your collections, smart collections and publishing services. Not ideal, but better than nothing.


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## juslaughter (Nov 14, 2017)

Hi Johan

Thanks for the reply. I have started the Metadata save, looks like its going to take a while. I will let you know how I get on when its done.

Cheers

Julian


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 15, 2017)

Adobe have been fixing catalogs showing this error (and hopefully fixing the bug causing it too). So it could be worth contacting customer services or the bug report forum. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## juslaughter (Nov 16, 2017)

Hi Victoria

Thanks for the response. I am into Day 2 of the manual migration so may as well continue with it for now. The Save to Metadata took 27 hours, the first import of 75k+ images took 5 hours and the build of previews has been running since yesterday afternoon and isn't even a quarter of the way through. Got the bigger drive of 90k+ images to do yet too.


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## juslaughter (Nov 20, 2017)

A quick update for you on my progress. The manual migration suggested by Johan has just completed, so just over 6 days to complete. Its been a long process but at least I now have my catalog in the new version. Just got to recreate my collections and export options but that shouldn't take long.

Thanks for all the help and advice.


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 20, 2017)

Good to hear!


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 20, 2017)

Wow, that was a long process! I'm glad you're happy now though.


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## juslaughter (Nov 23, 2017)

Sure was. I was really excited too but now have some issues with using the graduated and radial filters in the new version. So when I drag a grad from the top of the screen, it created the grad but then I can't move it or resize the grad. Making adjustments works OK but actually moving the grad doesn't. Same with the radial filter.


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## artmaltman (Nov 24, 2017)

juslaughter said:


> A quick update for you on my progress. The manual migration suggested by Johan has just completed, so just over 6 days to complete. Its been a long process but at least I now have my catalog in the new version. Just got to recreate my collections and export options but that shouldn't take long.
> 
> Thanks for all the help and advice.


Glad that worked out but I want to caution about one thing:  last I checked (a year or two ago), the XMP approach does not preserve edits of virtual copies.   If you use virtual copies you might want to look into this.


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 26, 2017)

juslaughter said:


> Sure was. I was really excited too but now have some issues with using the graduated and radial filters in the new version. So when I drag a grad from the top of the screen, it created the grad but then I can't move it or resize the grad. Making adjustments works OK but actually moving the grad doesn't. Same with the radial filter.



What stops them from moving? Can you see the pin/overlay lines ok?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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