Today’s Question: I have two Lightroom Classic catalogs (I know you don’t recommend this, but it suits my needs). I have synchronization enabled for my primary catalog, but every time I open the second catalog, I’m prompted to synchronize that catalog. I only want to have synchronization enabled for the primary catalog. Is there a way to get Lightroom Classic to stop asking me to synchronize the second catalog?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can disable this message by deleting the catalog helper file that contains the sync data for the catalog you don’t want to enable synchronization for.
More Detail: Lightroom Classic only allows you to enable synchronization to the cloud for a single catalog. If you open a catalog and get a message asking if you want to enable synchronization for that catalog, this is an indication that synchronization had been enabled at one time for this catalog, but that you then switched to synchronizing a different catalog.
To disable this message, you can delete the sync data file associated with the catalog. First, open the catalog that you don’t want to enable synchronization for and open the Catalog Settings dialog (found on the Edit menu on Windows or the Lightroom Classic menu on Macintosh). Go to the General tab and click the Show button in the Information section. This will open a window in your operating system with the folder containing your catalog files selected.
Open the selected folder to view the catalog files. Locate the file that has the same name as the primary catalog file (the file with the .lrcat filename extension) that also includes “Sync” as part of the filename. For example, if the primary catalog file is called “Lightroom Classic Catalog.lrcat”, the sync file would be called “Lightroom Classic Catalog Sync.lrdata”.
Once the sync data file is removed, when you launch Lightroom Classic you’ll no longer be prompted to enable synchronization for this catalog.
