Comments Lightroom 4 includes the ability to easily create and publish photo books. While many Lightroom customers have enjoyed creating photo books inside Lightroom, some have reported a disturbing bug about which I’d like to provide additional information.
The Issue
While working on a page spread that contains a caption with multiple colored text, the book can disappear.
To Avoid the Issue
- Update to Lightroom 4.2 immediately. Lightroom 4.2 contains safeguards that may aid in the recovery of a lost book. To update, please either use the Help-> “Check for Updates” menu option within Lightroom or download the update here [Windows, Mac]
- Avoid using multiple text colors within the same text box
Recovering a lost book
- If you are using Lightroom 4.2*, this warning will appear.
- Click “Cancel”.
- Quit Lightroom 4.2.
- The warning will appear again. Click “Cancel” again.
- Restart Lightroom.
- In the Book module, your book will be there.
*We are not aware of any methods to recover a lost book in either Lightroom 4 or Lightroom 4.1. Please update to Lightroom 4.2 through the Help->”Check for Updates” menu option within Lightroom or download the update here [Windows, Mac]
Next Steps
The Lightroom team is currently researching and evaluating this bug to ensure that there are no other ways that it can be triggered. Our aim is to include a fix in a future update to Lightroom 4. In addition to the feedback we received from the Lightroom community and feedback forums, I’d like to also personally thank two Lightroom customers who played a critical role in helping us isolate and better understand the bug. Alan Shapiro and Marko Nara, thank you for all of your help in getting to the root of this issue.
Woohoo. Go team.
Dear Sharad Mangalick,
Add me to your list of victims of Lightroom’s Book module. I was about, oh, I don’t know, maybe 150 pages into a book I’ve worked on for several weeks when Lightroom began getting cranky. This morning I was working (mostly on captions). I moved some pics from one file to another and then was reconnecting the links and then ‘poof!’ Nada. The Void. Has Adobe put out a product that has no backup option at all? Not even to the previous work flow? And no warning of this whatsoever? If so, shame, shame, shame.
Adobe, you owe me.
Sorry to hear of the book being lost. It is very frustrating, scary, and startling to have that kind of thing happen to you.
We’ve made changes in LR4.2 to stop this from happening, but if you were prior to 4.2, you wouldn’t have had the messages pop up.
So update to LR 4.2 as soon as you can, and read about what is causing the books to disappear to be able to avoid it… “Avoid using multiple text colors within the same text box”
Same thing happened to me without warning, with version 4.2 [850741]. But the book is empty and the filmstrip at the bottom of the page is there indicating images are in the book.
I use LR 4.2 and I was just about to finish my first book with it. When I’ve opened LR today it showed me only blank pages, text, colors and so on but no pictures. The filmstrip on the bottom indicates the pictures I had used so far but they won’t show up again on the pages no matter if I restart LR or save a book, export a PDF or whatever. I hope I can recover the project using TimeMachine on my Mac. I’ve been a heavy user of LR from version 1.0 on. I can tell you this issue is really disappointing me.
Hi Tobias,
Are you using multiple text colors within the same text box?
That was one of the known causes for books disappearing and is mentioned above as one of the things to avoid.
If you aren’t, then perhaps you could post on our feedback site so we can look further into the issue.
http://phtshp.us/report_a_problem
ditto! not once, but twice. i was putting the final touches to my blurb book and abracadabra, it was gone. taking the appropriate time to recompose myself, i embarked on the project a second time only to have it pull a disappearing act once again. i realized that when this happened, on both instances, i was copying text from another book and pasting it to my new one. i can assure you that i don’t do that anymore!
Are you up to date with Lightroom Diana? 4.2? or 4.3RC?
Since 4.2 we’ve put in some catches so that you won’t lose your book.
I have also lost two books that I had saved in collections and was thirty pages in on a third book. The next thing I new it gave me a warning that there was an error and I would have to close Lightroom 4.2. I was expecting to lose my current changes and Addition. What I
Found was my two books which were saved in my collection and the new book where gone.
I search the Internet for similar problem and found this site. There is definitely a bug in v4.2.
Looking for answers. I lost a lot of work.
I have been having all sorts of issues with the Book module. For a book that I had created, my pages would not export to jpg when I hit the “export to jpg” button. I tried also exporting to PDF and had a similar problem. I’m running LR 4.2 on a Macbook using OS 10.6.8…
Today when going back to try my luck again with exporting the book, the book was gone! My book icon was still there, but no book pages…Unbelievably upset right now. I have no idea what to do.
Could I possibly uninstall and then try and re-install LR 4.2? Any help or idea’s would be greatly, greatly appreciated!
Thank you.
Rod Kaye
One additional piece of information concerning my above post; the book that disappeared only contained text on the cover (white) and no where else…
I’m also hoping to be able to recover it through TimeMachine, but almost the bigger concern is not being able to export the thing when I need to which truly leaves me in lerch and wasting valuable time.
RK
Hey, i already ask in the support forum, but they told me, that there is no option to recover a lost book. Now I am reading here, that there might be a chance to get all the work back… so what should I do? I was on 4.2 when all the pages of a book went blank. I did not get a pop up or a message or whatsoever. Just upgraded to 4.3 RC in the hope, it would change my situation – but still the same white pages here. Is there a procedure to bring the vanished pages back?
I am LR 4.2. user with the same problem… My book I have worked on 2 months was gone. Where LR 4 saves the books? I cannot find the file, cannot recover my book. I am VERY disappointed.
I’m also a victim. I am using LR4.2, and I followed the instructions above and it did not restore my book. I am DEEPLY disappointed. I lost 2 books that I had worked on for many hours. When I go back to the book, it has the little numbers above the photos like they are being included in the book, but the book is empty. When I lost everything, I was simply putting the text on the spine of the book. It was not oriented correctly, so I looked at the settings on the book I had just finished. When I went back to the first book, all was gone. I went back to the second book, and everything was gone there too. I was not using multiple colors of text. Please tell me if there is ANY way I can recover this! Blurb’s Christmas deadline is in 3 days and I have about 5 more books to finish! I don’t know what I can do now because I sure don’t trust LR!
Working on a 230 p book in LR 4.3RC
No problems until now.
on the last pages I am using the image grid but every time I go to Library, Develop or something else and back to the saved book – my last changes are gone??
This issue prevents me from finishing the book.
Any advice?
Same issue others have reported — I’ve lost two wedding albums in the last half hour. When switching to the layout, all photo cells are blank. All of the photos on the film strip are marked as used, but all cells are blank.
It is NOT an issue with text boxes or colours of text, as I have NO text boxes or captions whatsoever. This is the 4th and 5th times this week that I’ve lost wedding albums (in the pre-Christmas printing rush!!) to this bug.
Are you up to date with LR 4.3 Aaron?
Just got here looking for an answer. Same thing happened, although I lost TWO books. I was copying boiler plate inside cover text from one to paste into the other, all the same color text.. Copy, change books, “Poof” all work gone. Back to first book, “Poof”, all gone too. I thought the ease of LR and Blurb would speed up the process from InDesign. Frustrating doesn’t come close. No save function, weeks of work gone, TWO books vanished, all text gone for good. Glad I have a trust fund to fall back on…I wish. I thought it was a joke at first. PLEASE fix this asap so I can use LR again. Yes I will update to 4.2, but it’s a little late. Let me know if there’s any answer to this.
Sadly we wont’ be able to find the books that have vanished. They have done just that — Vanished.
Go ahead and update to LR 4.3 and hopefully you won’t see any more book trouble!
Follow up. You were correct, there were two colors, black and a medium gray I missed during my first rant. I have found previous copies of the books on an earlier .lrcat file from one week ago. Not complete, but not total losses. Since the file is a week old I would like to update my current catalog with the weeks images. How do I import the good books into the latest catalog without the corruption? I have updated to 4.2.
Thanks.
Still the same problem with the new 4.3 Update..
Any experience about this issue?
Which problem Morten?
Help! I’m in Lightroom 4.3, and I just lost my book. I know it’s in there somewhere because the images in the filmstrip that are in the invisible book still have the overlay numbers on them showing how many times they appear in the book. But the book module shows only empty pages. I had saved my book as a Book Collection, and I’m in that collection. I never (knowingly) used multi-colored text in the same caption. All I did was change the filter so I could use some pictures from another collection in my book, and when I clicked back on my Book Collection, the pages were all gone. I tried quitting and restarting as suggested above, but that didn’t fix anything. Please help. This is awful.
Well, I got hit by this…. in 4.2.
But unlike the original post suggesting how to avoid the problem, I have zero captions in my book, and one page color througout. The book is also finished — exported to PDF. Went back to make a few changes the next day and the book is blank. The images still show counts in the filmstrip, and the book still shows 192 pages with the right layouts on the right pages, but the entire book is blank. It’s a ghost town… er, ghost book? Is this like having a ghost writer?
The theory that 4.2 fixed this (book was made in 4.2), that I would be prompted before deleting pages (never happened), and that editing captions or messing with page colors would cause the problem (same white background on 100% of pages, not a single layout with a caption), seems to not match my situation.
Am I hitting a different bug? Should I log this independently?
While updating book copy, pages 1-21 OK (except now I’ve lost all the copy on introduction page), pages 22-36 vanished. Using Lightroom 4.3, Windows 7, 64 bit. All inside copy consistently dark grey. Other weirdnesses include: when attempting to re-populate the disappeared/missing pages I get an indication that there are two images being used in the document. Another weirdness is that some of the type specs (font, size, tracking) when I highlight the copy does not properly identify the actual body copy font, size, and/or tracking. Another weirdness is that I am unable to zoom image to fill at 6%. Goes from 5 to 7% at 100% or 4:1. Book originated with Lightroom 4.2.
Hi Phillip,
Can you post these details to our feedback site so the engineers can take a look? http://phtshp.us/report_a_problem