Lightroom Catalog empty

Using LR 2 -

I closed a catalog with over 1800 images in it, opened it back up and all the photos are gone. I turned off all filters, and when i click on all photographs says- 0 !! i EDITEDabout half of these photos and i really dont want to started from scratch again... Any ideas?

Is it possible that you opened something different than the catalog you were working on? Try the Open Recent function and see if the catalog you were using shows up.

NO- I tried opening the same catalog, then I tried opening a time machine backup of the catalog as well. No good either way....

Hmm, are the photos on the hard drive? If so, what happens if you try to import a folder? If they are already in the catalog, LR won't want to import them.

I don't know what your problem might be, I'd try to poke around in any way I could to find what may be causing it.

Photos are on the hard drive same location. Lightroom has no problem importing them.... I am totally stumped. Looks like I have to start editing over 700 photos again!

Well, I don't have a clue. Do you have an LR backup that you can reference?

unfortunately no- only backup i had of the catalog was in time machine, and that file doesnt work either.

Make sure you have Lightroom ALSO write edits to the XMP files. That way if you're catalog gets messed up again, you should be able to retain all the settings as long as the XMP files are intact (which they should be, if the raw files are still there)