Trouble opening older iPhoto libraries

Question

I am using iPhoto '08; 7.1.5.
I categorize my photos into libraries by year. The oldest is 2006, then 2007, and now 2008.
I opened my 2006 library and tried to open a picture. It became full size on the screen and then turned to a black background with a large white exclamation point . Then quickly returned to the thumbnail size. I tried this with several pictures and they all did the same thing.
I then checked the 2007 library and it was fine, as is the 2008 library.
I accessed these through iPhoto not my pictures on the hard drive.
Can anyone help me understand what is happening with my iPhoto? Is there a way to correct it?
Thank you.

Answer 1

Here is my post from earlier today. I am also iPhoto 7.1.5. At the bottom is what I ended up doing which seems to have fixed this issue, it takes some time.
+I have been struggling with trying to understand why, in many of my Events, not all, the thumbnails show up with the grey exclamation mark when enlarged. After studying the iPhoto Library, I discovered that all of the Events that were producing this problem had been renamed from the default name "Roll # in the information pane (in iPhoto Application) after importing from the camera. iPhoto Library appears to create a new folder called "iPhoto Originals" where it places these events which seems to "orphan" these photos.+
+I rebuilt the photo library with all options including "Recover orphaned photos in the iPhoto Library folder". It asked "do you want to import orphaned photo", I said yes. All of photos in the "iPhoto Originals" folder were imported into a new default Event named by the oldest photo date. It also created a new Album called Recovered Photos.+
+The Events referencing the "orphaned" photos still exist with the same problem. How can I recreate the original Events with the newly imported original photos with out creating the original problem?+
+• Should I delete the photos from orphaned Events and then move the recovered photos into the that Event?+
+• Should I delete the orphaned Event entirely, create a New Event and then move the recovered photos into the that Event?+
Here is what I ended up doing.
I opened the new Event with the newly imported orphaned photos and made sure all the photos that were imported were the same ones giving me issues with the famous grey exclamation mark. Then I identified the Events that were problems, wrote them down and deleted them. Don't worry, they will be in your iPhoto trash for safe keeping until you are done.
Go back to the newly imported photos, selected the photos you want in an individual Event, flag them, go to Events in the tool bar and select "Create event from flagged photos", rename the new event in the Library Event view by clicking on the text, not in the information pane in the lower left of the window. This is what seemed to cause the problem originally.
Hope this helps, it's a little tedious but seems to work.