DaveD10913

I was deleting some files from my LR catalog and ended sending half of my catalog to the trash bin. I haven't emptied it and the folders are there. How do I return the folders to my catalog? TIA

CPR Loc: Nature Coast of Florida

Go to the Trash Folder - click on the items and click Restore. The files should return from wence they came and LR can see them again. You may have to Import them again???

jeryh Loc: Oxfordshire UK

Double click on the trash bin, and put your files back on the desk top

WayneT Loc: Paris, TN

On Windows, open trash bin, right click on file, click restore.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Do what the other guys said, then go have a cocktail while Lightroom rebuilds its catalog.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Yes, there are at least 3 ways to restore files from Window's Recycle Bin and if you are Mac I am sure they provide ways to do the same thing.

If not then the high end paid version of Piriform's Recuva is $19.95.

While doing disk cleanup on Friday I "thought" I had accidentally done the same thing to my whole "picture" library so instead of using the free version I paid and ran it. (Yes, I had over loaded Recycle and most of the 20 GB I had cleaned out were deleted totally. It found over 6000 files that were 100% recoverable, but my Pictures has aprx 30,000 images back to about 1998 (scanning in old pics a few at a time) so I freaked. Yesterday afternoon I found that while dragging things to recycle I had moved "Picture" to "Music", the whole thing was there as a sub folder of the "Music" library I had just emptied.
I have canceled my heart attack, nervous breakdown and vacation at the mental hospital. I did drink almost 1/2 gal of Gatorade to replace the fluids lost from crying. Or was that from the 4 hours potting plants and working in the yard at 90F while trying to forget what I "thought" I had done?

DaveD10913

Thanks for all of your responses and suggestions. My brother and I restored all of the files and my catalog is back. One thing that I don't understand is a few of the folders are greyed out and have a ? on them. They still work properly and the photos are there, but the folder has the question mark. It doesn't cause any problems, it's annoying.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

What! No backup?

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

As a matter of fact I have Acronis 2015 and do 1 full and 6 daily incremental a week on an external drive. But the 18th was the last day I had a good backup since I did the deleting and disk cleaning on the 19th before the scheduled daily backup and wanted to try and recover the files without going back to the day before (I only had a few changes, but!!!! So after I got "Pictures" back where it belongs I went to delete the incremental backup for the 19th so the goof wasn't preserved. And lo and behold I found that something went wrong with Acronis' connection to the external drive. They show as grayed out and it says it cannot find them. But I go through file manager and they are all there, I can open them and see everything, I can even click on individual pictures and see a thumbnail and they all have the same address, drive name etc. as before. I am waiting for Monday so I can talk to a human since I cannot make heads or tails out of Acronis' FAQ, the problem doesn't seem to be there anyway, unless they call it something I didn't think of. I tried skimming the manual (aprx 150 pages) and couldn't find it.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Good luck Monday

blackest Loc: Ireland

That should be no problem you have 2 external drives with your backup copies don't you?

No? Well perhaps it's time to ensure you have before it happens for real. It must be worth a couple of 100 dollars so you don't lose everything you have already put so much time in to.

Ok just seen you do have a backup plan just need to ensure it works , good luck on monday. At least its pretty much still just a fire drill.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

If you accidentally delete your images, you can usually recover the very last file(s) from your deletion command by simply pressing Ctrl Z which will undo the previous command. At least that's how it works on a PC.

If you open your trash and restore the missing files AND you were writing changes to xmp, you can restore the missing files to their previous locations by selecting "restore" - which will do just that.

To finish, you open LR, Library Module, Folder View. Navigate to the top level folder (s) that contained the files you removed, right click and select Synchronize Folder. It will go a little faster if you have xmp, and your edits will be restored as well.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Unlike real life, changing your mind and getting something out of the trash on a computer is easy and clean.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

Use Acronis Chat and request a remote session. Their tech support is superb. Another way is to simply redo the destination in the Acronis Backup.
Mark

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.