Lost all of my star rated images on importing existing catalogue - Help!

[AndyWatson]

Help ! Please... I followed the tutorial instructions to transfer my Lr 2 catalogue to my newly set up  Lr 3 but none of my star rated images transfered.
Is that because I had not saved to XMP metadata files on these images in the old catalogue ?  Any hints? Will I have to start again and reload Lr 3, having saved to
XMPs on my old catalogue ?  Many thanks if any advice.

[John R Smith]

Andy

You did have your catalog backed-up, right?

John

[AndyWatson]

Yes John, I had it backed up and have all the original raw files too. I also have my Lr 2 catalogue still running in its
original form. My worry is more about why all of the star rated images did not transfer into Lr 3.
Thanks if you can help.

[john beardsworth]

I don't know what the tutorials says, but this is how to get your LR2 catalogue into LR3. Open LR3 and File > Open Catalog, then point to your LR2 catalogue, and let LR3 convert it (it creates a copy so there's no risk). You should not be thinking about xmp files in this upgrade context.

John

[AndyWatson]

John,

Yes that is what I did and it has imported everything Ok except for the 15% of the images which I had star rated. Of course those are the most important
ones and the ones which I had done crop and retouch to so that is my problem.

[john beardsworth]

Andy

In Lr3, create a completely new catalogue, then use File > Import from Catalog to import your LR2 catalogue. Make 100% sure it is the LR2 catalogue that's being imported (you should get a message about converting the format). This should work reliably and I've not seen any other reports of a problem in this area.

John

[AndyWatson]

John,  Thanks for that. I have had success by uninstalling Lr3, spending some tome on my Lr2 using 'cmd'  's' to save all my rated images information to XMP and optimising again Lr2. I then reinstalled Lr3 but this time on an external HD and File >imported the Lr2 catalogue.  All seems well so far, so I'm not quite sure which procedure helped but happy to be up & running. Thanks for your help. Andy