products and categories have disappeared in admin

i must of messed up something!
not sure what happened, but all my categories and products have disappeared from view on the back end.
products appear on site, and if i do an export, products and categories are there?

don't know what to do next?!

thanks...

It's probably because you changed some of the filters on the listings. Try to logout/login from your back end and see if that fixes the problem.
Otherwise, please make a screenshot of the listings. Also, turn on the debug mode in the configuration of joomla and try again to display the listings. If you get an error please report it.

Logout/in did not fix problem, tried that several times

debug does not show any errors

not sure what screenshot you want

What if you click on the Root link on the left ? Do you see categories ? Could you do a screenshot of that page ?

would it be safe to try an akeeba restore?

Yes, you could try a restore because I don't see how such thing could have happened.
What's even more strange is that you said that they are still displaying on the front end.

one thing i'm good at is breaking programs and websites

anyway...restored akeeba backup and everything now seems fine.

thanks for the great help as usual