Auto White Balance issues

I am a newcomer learning this great programme. However I have had some intermittent issues and I am looking for advice.
I have found that sometimes Ctrl At N somehow doesn’t work, but if I repeat the command I find that I immediately shut down lightroom which in addition has created a new catalogue called Nn. What is happening. I also find that sometimes I cannot get the AUTO WB feature to work on more than one image even if I select a group.At other times it does work. Is it because I am in the Develop rather than the Library Mode? or what ? Sometimes it works perfectly and at others it doesn’t I must be doing something wrong. I don’'t know what it is.
Thanks