supercub

how do i locate "existing catalog for lightroom classic?
I went to Alaska for 6 mos and unpluged my computer and external hard drives. When I opened light room I got a message saying the catalog could not be found. I am afraid I will lose all my changes to my photos in light room.
any help greatly appreciated.

one_eyed_pete Loc: Colonie NY

Where did you put your " .lrcat " file? You might trying to do a search in your computer for "*.lrcat*" The detailed method may differ from PC to MAC. That's how I can find mine. Typically the highest number is the latest catalog.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Inside LR - File / Catalog Settings / General

This tells you the catalog location, including a <show> button that opens the folder location.

fredpnm Loc: Corrales, NM

On a PC - can't speak for a Mac.

Instead of clicking on the program's icon to launch LR, right-click on the icon and it will provide you a shortlist of recent catalogs you've used with LR. Perhaps one of those is the one you are looking for.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Have you made sure everything is plugged in and turned on just like it was before you left? Can you see all the external hard drive icons?

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

It's quite possible that the catalog is on one of the external drives. Plug them back in and restart LR. It's also quite possible that the drive letter will change if you don't plug the external drive into the right USB port. If you have more than one external drive, swap the USB cables to other USB ports on your computer.

Or do a search for the catalog on all your drives and then when you restart LR you can tell it where the catalog is.

You can also go into the LR catalog setting and see where it has been saving the backups and then you can point LR to that drive, and that folder..

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

Find where the catalog was last (see above posts) and check to see that the name of the drive that has your photos is the same. I find on Windows that if I have a lot of drives and unplug several of them, plugging one of them in again may not assign the same drive name as it had before (turning the computer off and rebooting may do that also). However, there is a way to avoid that.

Go to the Disk Management Utility. (Google will give you some ways to find that). It will give you a list of the disks that you have attached to your computer. Locate the one that has your images. Using the Disk Management Utility, you can assign a permanent name for that drive. That way whenever you plug it in, it will have the right name (as long as there is not a different disk using that name).

It's important that the drive name be constant. The drive name is part of the path that Lightroom uses to locate the files.

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

Assuming you're a Windows user, search your drives for *.lrcat.zip. Also, open LR and go to Edit/Catalog settings to see where LR expects to find the catalog. Maybe one of your drives go it's drive letter changed - Windows will do that.

supercub

I went to Edit in lightroom Classic and I looked at the cat settings. It was set to once a week backups I found one In D:\stuff from c drive\pictures\lightroom . I found it by LRCC icon. When I clicked on it i got a message that the file does not exist not exist

I started importing to LRCC last Jan. Where did all the previous backup go from that location? right clicking the When I clicked on it it after right clicking i get a message that it does not exist. The D drive is a internal drive on my windows pc.

Can I do a system restore to last April to get my catalog back?

If all this fails what happens to the pictures I modified in LRCC if I start from scratch and add all my photos to LRCC. will they show up as duplicates?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

A 'system restore' would not typically recover your data files. The Windows restore process addresses changes to the Windows operating system.

But, what exactly is the problem? You asked about how to find the LRCAT. But, this latest post only gives information about where the backups are going. Where is the LRCAT supposed to be?

Inside LR - File / Catalog Settings / General

This tells you the catalog location, including a <show> button that opens the folder location.

Where is your LRCAT supposed to be? From the location identified by LR, is the LRCAT there? Is the drive letter mounted and is that the problem that needs to be resolved?

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

This shows where to (likely) find your LR catalog backups: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/back-catalog.html