LR Print templates AWOL

[Greg D]

A couple weeks ago I upgraded LR5 to LR6 (perpetual not CC).  I went to print something today for the first time since, and something strange has happened to my user print templates folder:  It seems to be the user temps folder from several updates ago.  All the templates I created in LR5 (most for 3880) are gone, and lots of templates that I deleted in LR5 (from earlier days, mostly for printers I don't have anymore) are back.  How the #*&! did that happen and is there any hope for recovering them?  My other user templates (import, develop presets etc) survived just fine.  Any help appreciated.

[Manoli]

Are you on Windows or macOS ?
On mac all  Lr templates & presets are stored in
Users/<user>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom

Search the drive and you should find the files, then copy over to the above directory and point Lr to the correct folder ( '+' on the template browser )

[john beardsworth]

Also look at Preferences > Presets tab. You may have previously enabled "Store presets with this catalog", but cleared the preferences when upgrading.

[Greg D]

I did have the "Store presets with catalog" box checked and it was indeed cleared on upgrade.  I did find the print templates folder (I'm on Windows btw) but its contents are the same as shown in the current LR6 installation.  That's what I see even when I look at the folder in the backup of my old (LR5) pre-upgrade catalog. ?

[john beardsworth]

That implies you've accidentally deleted your templates, or maybe you moved the catalogue file at some point and forgot to move the templates and presets folder.

[Greg D]

That implies you've accidentally deleted your templates, or maybe you moved the catalogue file at some point and forgot to move the templates and presets folder.

Would seem to be the case, but I haven't moved the catalog, and the preset & template folders are still there with it, just empty (or nearly so).  Don't see how I could have deleted them accidentally.

[Greg D]

On further use, looks like my other templates (import, develop, metadata) have also disappeared.  These were all there a few days ago, so did not get lost in the upgrade.  I did have a pre-upgrade backup, and restored them all from that, once I figured out how to get the backup catalog to open using LR5, which was still on the computer (to avoid converting that catalog to LR6, which I thought at that time might result in the same loss of temps).  So all temps & presets are restored now, but I have no idea what I did to lose them to begin with.