Avoid a bad iPhoto5 'vanishing album' bug
Jan 25, '05 05:30:00PM
Contributed by: allanmarcus
Be very very careful in iPhoto 5. Many people are having problems. Some are losing libraries, but most are losing albums. The pictures are still there, but it's easy to lose an album. Here's how I managed to stop album loss.
- BACKUP your library before you start. You undoubtedly will need to restore.
- Album loss seems to be associated with moving an album into a folder that contains other albums. I think this only occurs if the album was created prior to iPhoto 5, or if the album has not resided in a folder yet. The answer? Create an empty dummy folder. Move the album into the dummy folder first, then move the album to the final folder you want it in. Once the album is moved into the dummy folder, I think some meta-data gets added tothe album and it's now safe to move.
- If you move an album into a folder, make sure it's in the folder before you do anything else! If you can't see the album in the folder, hit Undo (Command-Z) right away, and you will get your album back. If this happens, try the trick in step two before you try dragging it again.
[robg adds: Reader allanmarcus originally added this in a comment to the Pages review story, but I felt it was well worth publishing as a tip of its own. This actually happened to me last night, and I thought I was going crazy -- I'd move an album into a folder, and it would vanish. I'd hit Command-Z, and it would come back. I'd try it again, and this time it would work. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't ... frustrating! Today, I spent some time on it, and figured out what's happening ... so while the above method will work, I believe the following solution will also, and it's a bit easier.
First, how it happens: I'm not sure why this happens, but I do know when it happens. The conditions are: a folder with at least one album already in it, and another album being added -- and as noted, that album has not previously been in a folder, and must have been created in iPhoto4. The reason I was getting spotty results last night was due to how I was dropping the albums:
When I drop an album as shown on the left side of the above image, it will vanish (assuming it meets the above conditions). When I drop an album as shown on the right side, it works 100% of the time -- even for albums that should vanish according to the above rules. So, the easiest workaround is: always drop dragged albums onto the containing folder, not into the hierarchy of albums within the folder! Once it's been placed once, you can then drag it around inside the folder to place it.]
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