Problems dragging albums & folders in iPhoto

I've recently been having sporadic trouble moving albums & folders within iPhoto: when I drag the folder, it "sticks" -- it won't "let go" at the new location. Right-clicking the mouse doesn't have any effect. Sometimes I just have to shut down the computer or it stays "stuck" to my cursor.
I used the Disk Utility and got some "missing thread record" and "missing directory record" errors, which were reported to be repaired, but this didn't help the problem.
I have OS 10.6.3 and iPhoto 9, running on a Macbook Pro. Plenty of available disk space.
Suggestions?

Try trash the com.apple.iPhoto.plist file from the HD/Users/ Your Name / library / preferences folder. (Remember you'll need to reset your User options afterwards. These include minor settings like the window colour and so on. Note: If you've moved your library you'll need to point iPhoto at it again.)
*What's the plist file?*
For new users: Every application on your Mac has an accompanying plist file. It records certain User choices. For instance, in your favourite Word Processor it remembers your choice of Default Font, on your Web Browser is remembers things like your choice of Home Page. It even recalls what windows you had open last if your app allows you to pick up from where you left off last. The iPhoto plist file remembers things like the location of the Library, your choice of background colour, whether you are running a Referenced or Managed Library, what preferences you have for autosplitting events and so on. Trashing the plist file forces the app to generate a new one on the next launch, and this restores things to the Factory Defaults. Hence, if you've changed any of these things you'll need to reset them. If you haven't, then no bother. Trashing the plist file is Mac troubleshooting 101.
Regards
TD

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Why can't i drag albums created in iPhoto onto desktop

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This User Tip
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Nothing happens when I hold shift and option key while double clicking on iPhoto. I had imported one jpeg from within Picture folder to iPhoto..so application is working. BUT,
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I've been using a PC for years to manage my photos and now I have thousands of pictures organized in hundreds of folders.
When I loaded my pictures in iPhoto, it was considered as one Album...
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If you drag your PC folder containing photos into the Album pane of iPhoto that folder will be imported both as an Event and as an album as seen in this video.
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Problem with Aperture not syncing iPhoto albums to iPad

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I was experiencing this exact same problem for days and none of the fixes I have found have worked for me, including the one listed here. Only un-installing Aperture allowed me to again sync my iPhoto albums individually again to my iPad2/iPhone4S. Even after re-generating the library for previews/thumbnails, as other posts have suggested to do in Aperture, I still could not see the option to select individual iPhoto Albums as it was greyed out in iTunes.
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Welcome to the  Discussion Forums
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How can I archive photos in iPhoto to a hard drive and retain the Album folders and the Events?

How can I archive photos in iPhoto to a hard drive and retain the Album folders and the Events? I tried to Export the Albums but just transferred the files individually.

If you want to maintain the iPhoto organisation then back up the iPhoto Library.
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This User Tip
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4921
has details of the options in the Export dialogue.

I created folders in iphoto on my imac, synch using itunes and selected all photos from iphoto but those albums don't show up...most my albums do but a few don't!??

I have a new iMac and I'm a new mac user....I have an iphone5..and ipad2.
I have created folders on the imac in iphoto.
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Folders in iPhoto do not contain photos. Albums and Events do. Folders can contain albums, but not photos on their own.
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Renaming iPhoto album folders

I just found out I committed the cardinal sin of renaming iPhoto album folders while in Finder. Of course now nothing shows up in iPhoto app except empty shells of what used to be my photos. All the original photo file names are still the same, I only changed the folder names that they reside in. Is there something I can do to re-access all my photos in the library?

David,
You could rename the folders back to their original name. How large is your library and how many changes did you make? Folders are named year/month/date, all in numbers such as 2005/09/13. You can look a a few photos in each folder and determine the proper naming scheme. If you have a large library, this could be quite an effort. If you moved files around after renaming the folders, you are in for an even bigger task and one that may not be realistic to get right.
You could also extract your photos using iPhoto Extractor and then re-import the photos into a new iPhoto Library.
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Iphoto 11 problemi con album

Ciao..
scusate subito per l'ignoranza...
ho un problema con le modifiche negli album. si modifica anche la libreria..
c'è qualche impostazione da modificare?
c'è già una discussione da qualche altra parte?
Grazie mille..
hallo
sorry..
i've a problem with album. If i edit a photo in album, the photo changes also in library.
thanks

Correct.
It's the same photo. Albums simply reference photos in the LIbrary. They are the same file of the same photo. For different versions you'll need to duplicate the shot first.
Regards
TD

Import existing folders into iPhoto without copying

It seems like this should be an easy function, but I can not seem to get it to work correctly.
Just got my new Mac today and am still trying to navigate around (too many years of being a Windows user!) and would like to import my photos into iPhoto. I have a TON of pictures already on an external harddrive that are already categorized into descriptive folders. I'd like to import these folders into iPhoto, but want to keep my existing folder locations. Is this possible?
In the Preferences, I turned off the "Copyfiles to iPhoto Library folder when adding to library", but it seems that it is still creating a COPY of the photos in the DATA folder in the iPhoto Library folder. But in the ORIGINALS folder, the shortcut (alias?) is pointing to the original location on my external drive, not inside the Libary folder.
Is this possible? Or do I have to import all my files (essentially creating a duplicate of all files), and then delete the original locations that I have set up?
Thanks for your help!

cohencl
Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
ut it seems that it is still creating a COPY of the photos in the DATA folder in the iPhoto Library folder.
These are tiny thumbnails that iPhoto uses for display.
But in the ORIGINALS folder, the shortcut (alias?) is pointing to the original location on my external drive, not inside the Libary folder.
Correct, the alias is exactly what I would expect to find.
Is this possible? Or do I have to import all my files (essentially creating a duplicate of all files), and then delete the original locations that I have set up?
This suggests to me that you've not quite grasped iPhoto, and how it differs from other apps.
It's a photo Organiser, and the idea is simple: do your organisation in the iPhoto Window and let it look after the files. Otherwise, all you need is a file organiser - put files into folders - and an image viewer. The catch with that system is that you need multiple copies if you want a pic in more that one album.
iPhoto works on the basis that where the FILES are is unimportant to you, it's the PICTURES that count. So, it, in the default setting, imports the pics to the iPhoto Library Folder and you can forget about them. Then set up your albums, smart albums etc., in the iPhoto Window. The same pic can be in 5, 50 or 500 albums with no wasted disk space.
You can very quickly recreate the filing structure you have in iPhoto: simply drag the folders of pics to the Source (or left hand) pane and iPhoto will create a new album with the same name as the folder, then create your enclosing folders in iPhoto (File -> New Folder).
Some people resist this because the feel they'll be unable to find their pics should they want them: There are three ways (at least) to get files from the iPhoto Window.
1. Drag and Drop: Drag a photo from the iPhoto Window to the desktop, there iPhoto will make a full-sized copy of the pic.
2. File -> Export: Select the files in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export. The dialogue will give you various options, including altering the format, naming the files and changing the size. Again, producing a copy.
3. Show File: Right- (or Control-) Click on a pic and in the resulting dialogue choose 'Show File'. A Finder window will pop open with the file already selected.
Rolls in the iPhoto Window (View -> Film Rolls) correspond exactly with the Roll Folders in the Originals Folder in the iPhoto Library Folder. You can move photos between Rolls, you can rename rolls, edit them, create them, as long as you do it via the iPhoto Window. Check out the Info Pane (wee 'i', lower left) the name and date fields are editable. Edit a Roll Name using the Info Pane, the Roll Folder in iPhoto Library Folder/Originals will also have the new name.
You can run the iPhoto Library Folder from an external HD with no problems, just copy the iPhoto Library Folder there and then hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. Select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. Thereafter that will be the default iPhoto Library Folder.
Finally, if you choose to use iPhoto in the non-default setting, then remember iPhoto will not be responsible for the file management, you are. Therefore, you need to put the pics where they're going to live beofre importing, deleting will also be a multi-stage operation, as trashing the file in iPhoto will not remove it from your filing system. Migrating to a new machine can be more tricky as well. Frankly, I've never seen a good reason not to use the default setting, unless you're using two photo organisers.
Hope all this helps, by all means, post back if you need more info.
Regards
TD

Adust feature not working follow up Question/ lost album folders!

I tried trashing my iphoto plist from preferences and now have lost all my album folders which have very important projects sets I'm working on. I didn't empty the trash so I still have the folder but putting it back didn't seem to work. Is there a way to get my albums back. Help please! It's kind of important for me.

TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
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Do you Twango?
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Albums folder in iPhoto Library folder missing

The Albums folder in iPhoto Library folder missing. This means when I try to sync photos to my iPod (video) in iTunes, none of my photo albums show up (though I can seclect a specific folder useing year, month day, etc.). It also mens that I must navagate through the date folders to find photos when trying to attach them to e-mails.
I am running a G5 with the latest version of OSX, iPhoto, iTunes.
How do I recreat this folder?
Thankd for any help.
Cheers__ Heath

Hi Heath,
iPhoto 5 now stores the Album information in a data xml file. The Albums folder within the iPhoto Library folder is no longer used. At some point, usually after a rebuild, you will no longer have that folder in the Finder.
If you need to access photos from an album it is very difficult for a third party application to navigate the iPhoto Library in order to find the photo you need. You will have to know the date of import in order to find the photo.
There are some third party applications that can read the xml file and can navigate the iPhoto library and show you the Albums. Hopefully more applications will be revised to read this file.
Until then you will have to Share/Export the photos to the desktop. You can then navigate to the desktop to use the photos (example: web uploading from online photo site)
If your application supports drag and drop, you can drag the photo from an open iPhoto Library window into your application.
For email you can also use the email icon within iPhoto to open a message with the highlighted photo attached.
You can also use spotlight to find images in an Album...
This is what I have done using Spotlight to find my images that are in iPhoto albums without opening iPhoto..
In iPhoto, select the album, then select all, go to Photos/batch change.
Change the comments to text. In the text field I put the name of the Album.
Do this for each album.
Close iPhoto.
Open Spotlight and put in the name of the Album ( you have to remember the names of the albums or have then written down)
In the spotlight search results. click on "show all"
Under "Images" click on the "xx more" to show all the images in the album.
Make sure you have it in icon view, the icon view box is the last one on the blue images line.
Now you can control click on the image to "reveal in finder", open in iPhoto or Mail, etc.
I am not sure if this is going to make you happy and it is a little more work, but you can find images in albums and even view them in a slideshow (by clicking the play arrow at the end of the Images highlighted blue line) using Spotlight, all without opening iPhoto.
One important thing to know is you can set up a graphic program to be an external editor (when you double click an image in the library} such as PhotoShop or PS Elements. You set up that within iPhoto Preferences. Just make sure you save the image flattened and with the same name. The edits will then be relected in iPhoto when you hit "save".
Two Apple kbs for you to read
Don't tamper with files in the iPhoto library folder
About the iPhoto Library folder
Also, when you choose a folder to sync for your iPod, choose iPhoto in the drop down menu in iTunes, then choose the Album you want to sync. Do not choose a folder on your hard drive and then the Albums folder in the iPhoto Library folder.
Lori

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Hi everbody:
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