Merging iPhoto and Photos Libraries

[Guttershark]

Hi,

So a few years back I accidentally unplugged my external hard drive and it seemed to mess up my iPhoto library in some way...I can't really remember what exactly happened but I can't open the library any more.

Now I wan't to try and merge the photos from the old iPhoto library with my current Photos library but I can't seem to find a way of opening the old iPhoto library in Photos. I have tried holding down options, double clicking the Photos icon and then finding the library in the finder menu but the old iPhoto library is greyed out.

However, when I right click on the old iPhoto library icon on my external hard drive and click "Show Package Contents" I can see various folders including "Masters", "Originals", "Previews", "Attachments" and many more. In the "Masters" folder I can see lots of photos sorted into folders named after dates (I don't know if it is all of my photos but there seems to be quite a few). I can drag these photos into Photos and they seem to be placed into the correct date order etc..

SO my question is........can I just drag these pictures into the Photos app, or does all the other data that's in the iPhoto library need to be included somehow? The photos seem to look fine and be in the right date position so I don't know what all the other data is......

I hope that makes sense!

 

[PBG4 Dude]

“All the other data” is stored in your seemingly corrupted iPhoto data file.

Do you still have a copy of iPhoto lying around? I thought there was a “rebuild database” option if you held the Option key when clicking the iPhoto program icon.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Do you have a working copy of iPhoto that you can use?

If you're now using a newer version of the OS that has Photos but DOES NOT HAVE iPhoto, you can still use the "final version" of iPhoto -- version 9.6.1.

You probably can't get this from Apple now -- they make it very difficult to download.
HOWEVER -- if you don't mind going to "unofficial downloading sources", it is "findable" and you can get it there.

I would install iPhoto 9.6.1, then try to repair the damaged library.
IF you can get it repaired, I'd then select the entire library and "export" the originals (into a folder you place wherever you wish).
Then, I'd try RE-importing those originals into Photos.

I believe there are some 3rd-party iPhoto apps that might be useful.
The names escape me at the moment...