I did something dumb -- HELP!

Question

I have the messiest desktop in the world -- for a 22" cinema display (one of the old ones). I found a neat tip on macosxhints to clean up your desktop using Automator. I created an action that was supposed to find all sorts of files on my desktop and move them to newly created folders . . . to help me get organized. I have directions for .dmg, .zip, .jpg, .doc and on and on. All images were to be sent to a folder called Imagesto_befiled. This gets everything off of my desktop and I was going to run it once a day.
Well, I accidentally messed up the Automator script and instead of just finding images on my desktop, I accidentally had the .jpg script set to Computer. So, I get a spinning beachball as this thing is running for the first time. Apparently, it stumbled after moving about 12,000+ images from all over my machine. I lost images out of my Dreamweaver sites and just about any folder that had images. But, the most damaging images were the ones in folders inside of my iPhoto library. I have about 6,000 photos in iPhoto. because the Automator script stalled out (I ended up having to force quit), I still have most images in iPhoto. But, of the 6,000, i think about 300 - 400 of my iPhoto pictures were moves out and when I scroll through my iPhoto library, there is a white outline of a box where the photos should be. And, some thumbnails appear, but when I click on the thumbnail, the underlying image is no longer in the folder so nothing appears. Obviously, all of these images are sitting in my Imagesto_befiled.
I cannot undo the script, so that's out of the question. My most recent backup of the iPhoto library was Aug. So, I'll probably figure out how to replace my library with the old one and then I'll only have to fix the photos taken since then. That brings it down to about 50 pictures that will be missing.
I am wondering if anyone has any tips for how best to do this given that some are thumbnails and some are the original and even some are NEF (i shot RAW for a while)?
I don't care to maintain any albums, I just want my iPhoto library to have all of the images displayed so I can scroll through and still see the dates show up on the right. When I import the photos in the Imagesto_befiled back into the library, they all appear as though they were taken today even though some were taken back in 2002 or 2003 when they were in iPhoto before I messed it up.
Any help would be appreciate. And, I know, I know . . . I should have double-checked. Dumb, dumb, dumb! TIA.

Answer 1

Thank you for the reply. I am off to bed now, but I will attempt this in the morning. I forgot about the old library being iPhoto 5 as well. Whew!
I think I wrote incorrectly previously when I said, "When I import the photos in the Imagesto_befiled back into the library, they all appear as though they were taken today even though some were taken back in 2002 or 2003 when they were in iPhoto before I messed it up."
I just checked at the thousands of photos I imported into roll 267 (my newest roll) in are all appearing as though they were taken on June 10, 2002 . . . probably the date of the first image in that roll. But, that's just the little grey box that appears as I scroll through. When I click on an image, the correct Created date appears. Maybe things aren't so bad after all.
Getting the images back into the correct Rolls could take a long time, but at least I can do it now. I believe iPhoto creates thumbnails of large images as well because some of the photos are only like 24 kb while most are 4 MB. I am guessing this is the difference, so I'll have to sort by size and move the larger images back first into the appropriate folders . . . I think I can just drag the photos in as I figure them out since iPhoto thinks they're still there. And, fortunately most photos were taken with 2 cameras so the images named, "DSC_2543.jpg" and similarly are more likely iPhoto images while the named ones are probably not. Doh, I had renamed many and I think they are probably now labeled by their new title. That makes it more difficult to figure out which photos are from iPhoto and which might have been in a Dreamweaver site folder or another unrelated folder, etc. Maybe this is just something to work on over the next month . . . or more. Heh heh.
What a hassle. Lesson firmly learned. ;~)