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Saturn007

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 18, 2010
1,692
1,692
I have two Photos libraries. Now that I have a MacBook Air with a much larger SSD, I'd like to merge them. However, what's critical is preserving the folder structure within each library. I do not want to have to recreate that for thousands of photos.

I first tried Apple's recommended method... Oh, my word!! It took *four* hours just to export the older library... and it was clearly a mistake to select Moments for the folder structure for export. I ended up with gobs of folders by dates, but lost the original folder structure entirely.

Today, I tried export a single folder, with a bunch of sub-folders and albums--and made sure to turn OFF Moments -- i.e., I chose "None" where it asked about folders. That works. I can Import it into the newer library -- making sure to check the box for Preserve Folder Structure.


Is there a way of doing this *automatically*, en masse? Or, am I stuck having to export each folder from the old library MANUALLY and importing EACH one MANUALLY?

Plus, what do I do about the many photos -- hundreds that haven't yet been put into folders? Can the Export function handle a smart album?

Any tips much appreciated!

______________

P.S. Later: Oops! Discovered that my single folder export & import didn't work properly. It created folders for each album within the original folder. I can, but really don't want to, have to manually move each album out of its identically named folder and then delete all the sub-folders.

Where's the "It's that simple!" that Steve Jobs always touted?!! :cool:
 
I've returned to this issue now that I’m looking at a brand new M1 MBA!

Anyone have any recommendations on how to merge two Photos libraries while preserving both libraries' folder structures?
 
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