IPhoto 5 deleted my albums!

Question

I started iPhoto 5 for the first time today. Previously, I had all my pictures organized under a folder called "Albums," under the usual "pictures" folder. iPhoto 5 asked me if I wanted to transfer the albums to iPhoto 5, and I said yes. However, only some of the albums were transferred. Other albums that I had created and placed in my albums folder without using iPhoto disappeared completely. Not only do they not show up in iPhoto, but they are also no longer on my hard drive. The entire folder is gone. What more, my organization is completely gone; I had all my folders organized by date and subject, and instead of bringing the pictures in the way I had them organized (ie, if I had a folder called "Christmas 1999," bringing that in as an album called "Christmas 1999"), it brought the pictures in by when they were added into the computer. So now I am VERY VERY irritated at having lost not only my organization, but hundreds of pictures! What the heck is wrong with iPhoto 5?

Answer 1

Hi Liane,
You never used iPhoto before?
The Albums folder you made yourself in the finder?
When did iPhoto ask you to transfer the Albums? I have never heard of that before.
If you had an earlier version of iPhoto and upgrade to version 5, when you open it for the first time it will ask to upgrade your library. Is that what you meant?
The albums you placed yourself in the Albums folder will not import when the library is upgraded. You have to import them into iPhoto yourself.
since am still not sure what you are talking about and instead you mean you imported your whole Albums folder with albums you did yourself and not with iPhoto read the following:
Importing Images from the hard drive, CD, or DVD
To import a folder with subfolders of images maintaining the same organizational structure (or close to it):
Drag the folder into iPhotos viewing area.
A film roll will be created with each sub folders name. To view the rolls in the Library you need to first go to the menu bar and choose View>by film rolls.
To make each roll into an Album, highlight the tile of the roll
Go to File>new album from selection.
You will now have an Album in the source column with the images from that roll. Do this for each roll if you want them to be an Album. This is your choice.
Next, go to the menu bar and hit File>new folder
Name this new folder with the year or whatever the name was of the Parent folder containing the subfolders that you had dragged into iPhotos viewing area.
Next drag all the Albums into the respective new Parent folder you just made.
Albums- collection of images from one roll or many rolls. The Albums will be listed in your source column when you make them. The albums only contain placeholders for the images that are still in the library. They are not duplicates.
Rolls- rolls are created when you import folder of images. It will be given the name of the folder you are importing.
Rolls are also created from each import from your camera. You are given the option to name the roll at import.
Folder-a folder you create manually using the File>new folder command
Folders can hold Albums, slideshows, books, another folder, etc.
One other way you can import a folder of images and have an Album created for it as the same time it is imported as a roll in the Library view:
Drag each folder of images into the source column of iPhoto. When you see the plus sign, drop it in the source column.
An album will be created in the source column, and the roll that the album was created from will be in the library view window.
Further more, the organization of the iPhoto Library in the Finder is different than how it is within iPhoto where you do your own organization creating albums, folders, etc.
This is a view of how the iPhoto Library looks in the Finder.
It is organized by Year folders. Inside the Year folders are Month folders. Inside the Month folders are the days of the Month. Inside the day folders are the photos you took on that day. If you imported video clips and RAW files on that day they will be in an Originals folder. If you have edited any photo imported on that day, the original will be in that folder also.
If you can clarify more if you were using iPhoto before, if the albums folder you were taking about was in the Finder in the iPhoto Library folder or in the Pictures folder,etc.
If the album folder you were taking about was in the iPhoto Library folder, then that folder just had aliases to the images that were in the albums in iPhoto 4 and that album folder is no longer used by iPhoto and is usually deleted on an upgrade or rebuild of the iPhoto Library.
Hope this helps!
Lori