I Deleted a Client Gallery by Accident. Can I Get It Back?

A gallery can be deleted in two places: from its tile in your studio, or by deleting its published collection in Lightroom Classic when you use the plugin's Publish Service. Both run the same removal.

Two things the delete does not do. It sends no email to anyone, so your client is not told; they find out when the link fails. And it does not touch anything on your computer. Your catalog, your RAW files and any JPEGs you exported are exactly where they were.

Before you rebuild anything, take stock of what still exists. This decides which recovery below is yours.

• Your Lightroom Classic catalog. The plugin's delete sends only the gallery's id to the server. It does not remove photos from your catalog.
• Picks you already pulled into Lightroom. If you had synced or imported the client's picks before the delete, they are in your catalog as stars, a Pick flag and colour labels, and in the collection the plugin made for them. Those survive.
• An Export picks (.txt) file you saved. If you downloaded the filename list, it is on your drive and still lists what the client chose.
• Your exported proofs and your full-resolution files. Wherever you keep them, they are the raw material for the rebuild.

If the gallery came from the Pixieset import, remember that the import brought photos across at Pixieset's largest web size, not as original files. Your masters on your own drives are the real source, not the imported copies.

The Publish Service case needs care. When the gallery is deleted on the website, your published collection is still sitting in Lightroom, and Lightroom still believes its photos are published. If you click Publish on it, the server finds no gallery under the old id and creates a new one by name. But Publish only sends photos Lightroom counts as new or modified, so the new gallery can come back with a handful of photos instead of the whole set.

The clean way through:

1. Delete the orphaned published collection in Lightroom. This is safe only if you have not published it again since the website delete: its gallery is already gone, so the server finds nothing to remove. If you have published it again since, it now points at a new gallery, and deleting it would delete that one.
2. Right-click the ClientGallery service, choose Create Gallery, and give it the same name as before.
3. Drag the same photos in from your catalog.
4. Click Publish. Every photo in a fresh collection is new, so the whole set goes up.

On a free account this works too. A free account holds one gallery, and the deleted one no longer counts, so you can create its replacement straight away.

The photos are the easy half. The rebuilt gallery is a new gallery, so everything that lived on the old one has to be put back by hand.

• The link. Treat it as new and send it to the client. The clientgallery.io/g/ form of the link is always new, and do not count on the address on your own subdomain matching the old one. Copy the link from your studio and check it before you send it.
• The password. Set it again if the gallery had one. The plugin sends the password saved in its own settings; a browser-made gallery needs it typed in the studio.
• The welcome note, sections and payment link. Re-create them in the studio.
• The layout the client sees. Galleries created since 25 September 2026 open by default in the review room: a large photo, thumbnails on one side and comments on the other, with one Select button instead of star and love, and no colour labels. If the deleted gallery used the older one-page layout, tell the client the new one looks different.
• The full-resolution ZIP. Upload it again. It stays live for 3 days per handoff, and the re-upload counts again against your monthly ZIP allowance.
• The client's picks. These cannot be moved into the new gallery. If you have them in Lightroom or in a saved .txt list, you have what you need to keep editing. If you do not, the client will need to choose again.

The product does not tell them anything, so you should, and before they find a dead link. Keep it short and factual. Something like this works:

Hi Sam, I have moved your gallery to a new link: [link]. The password is the same as before. If you had started choosing favourites, those did not carry over, so please pick again from the new link. Sorry for the extra step.

Change the password line if you set a new one. Drop the favourites line if the client had not started, or if you already have their picks in Lightroom and do not need them to choose again.

On a gallery tile in the studio, the delete button does not delete. It opens a panel over the tile that asks you to confirm, says that the photos, the full-resolution ZIP and your client's picks go with it, and says their link stops working. Only the Delete button on that panel runs the delete. The other button is Keep.

There is no second chance after that, because the files are removed as part of the delete rather than parked somewhere for later. The upside is that a deleted gallery is actually gone, which is what you want when a client asks for their photos to be taken down. The cost is that a slip is not reversible.

In Lightroom, deleting a published collection deletes the gallery with it. It is a sync, and a sync carries removals across. If you only want a collection out of your left panel, deleting it is the wrong tool.

Accidents happen. What decides whether one costs ten minutes or a weekend is whether the source of the gallery still exists on your own drives. Four habits cover it.

1. Publish from the catalog, not from a loose folder of JPEGs. A published collection is a record of exactly which photos went into the gallery. If the gallery goes, the list does not.
2. Pull picks into Lightroom as soon as they arrive. Once they are stars and flags in your catalog, a deleted gallery cannot take the client's choices with it.
3. Keep originals in a place that is not the gallery. The gallery hosts JPEG proofs and does not warehouse RAW files. Your masters belong on your own drives, with a second copy. The guide to storing originals after delivery covers the three copies worth keeping.
4. Name galleries so you can find the source fast. If the gallery name, the Lightroom collection and the folder on your drive share the same client name and date, a rebuild starts with one search instead of a hunt.

Hosted galleries do not expire on clientgallery.io, so there is no clock pushing you to delete old ones. If you do tidy up, do it on purpose, one gallery at a time, and check the source still exists before you press Delete.

This page states no external figure. Every statement on it describes clientgallery.io and was checked against the product code on 30 September 2026: the studio delete action and the plugin's delete route, both removing the proof files, earlier photo versions and the gallery itself, with no trash, undo or restore and no email sent; galleries created since 25 September 2026 opening in the review room by default; the two-step confirmation panel on the studio gallery tile and its wording; the plugin deleting the gallery when its published collection is deleted, and sending only the gallery id; the plugin's publish request falling through to creating a new gallery by name when its stored gallery id no longer exists; incremental publishing of new and modified photos only; the free account's one-gallery count; the gallery link forms on the studio subdomain and at clientgallery.io/g/; the 3-day full-resolution ZIP window and the monthly ZIP allowance counting every upload; and the Pixieset import carrying Pixieset's largest web size rather than originals.