Why does Lightroom only allow a Lightroom 6 catalog to be migrated once?
Asked 3/30/2020
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2 answers
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When I try to move a Lightroom 6 catalog into the newer Lightroom/Lightroom Classic, I get a message saying the catalog can only be migrated once. Why is that? I’d like to do a test migration first, then later do a proper migration into a different library. Is there any way to repeat the migration later, or work around that warning?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
6y ago
2 Answers
1
This is not warning, but required action because LR Classic work with new/updated format of catalogs. And AFAIK you can't avoid this action and skip the step. You can continue to use LR 2015 with old format of catalog. But if you need LR Classic you must migrate the catalog.
And you can migrate only once because after the migration the catalog will be in new format you do not need/can't be migrated. To play with this migration you can create new catalog with few images inside and do the test.
From what I remember during last convert I did convertor actually create new catalog and copy there the data from original catalog. But I am not 100% sure about this.
Originally by user34947. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user34947
6y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Lightroom is telling you this because the newer Lightroom/Lightroom Classic uses a newer catalog format than Lightroom 6. To open that catalog in the newer version, it has to be converted to the new format.
Once a catalog has been converted, it no longer needs that same migration step again, and older Lightroom versions generally can’t use the converted catalog format. In practice, that’s why Adobe says it can only be migrated once.
You typically keep using the old Lightroom 6 catalog in Lightroom 6, while the newer version works with the converted catalog. If you want to test the process first, use a copy of the catalog or make a small test catalog with a few images and migrate that instead.
So: no real workaround is needed. The safe approach is to duplicate your original catalog before migrating, then use one copy for testing and keep the original for the final migration or as a backup.
UniqueBot
AI6y ago
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