iPhoto .... photo scrambled egg's

[Phil Foster]

My thanks to any Guru's who have a suggestion... Here's my situation:

- I'm running an older MacMini, OS 10.6.8 .... with an older iPhoto '11.

- I have over 8000 photo's, which, have suddenly lost ALL of their folder organization. All 8000 are now one continuous folder.

Here's what happened: I was inside the PHOTO's area of iPhoto (not "Albums"), viewing different contents within different folders. I noticed that I had about 20 photos in one folder that belonged by topic in a folder just above it,... and wanted to simply highlight the 20 photos and drag them into the above it (as I have done for years).
So, I clicked on the first of the 20 photos (highlighting it), and then hit the keys COMMAND + A (command all) to have it grab all the other 19 images in the folder... this was all cool, then I dragged the 20 highlighted images to that other folder.....
Suddenly, my iPhoto froze up (due to activity), and soon a progress window popped open showing that ALL 8000 IMAGES IN MY ENTIRE iPHOTO COLLECTION WERE BEING MIGRATED!!! ---- Why my "command ALL" command did not pertain simply to the contents of the folder I was within is UNKNOWN to me, nor, that my Mac gave me no visual indication that ALL other folders were now highlighted for relocation. --- Argh!!!
Once that progress bar was displayed showing me what was going on, I promptly attempted to QUIT the app, hit escape, nothing, I couldn't seem to interrupt the last action.... so, (in my ignorance) I reached behind the machine and hit the power button hoping this would stop the iPhoto activity. ------- When I relaunched my Mac, and reopened iPhoto.... ALL of years of organized folders with labels were gone. ALL 8000 photo's were now displayed as one continuous folder.
So, is there any way to "revert" iPhoto back to it's prior "organized" layout?

My thanks for suggestions,
Phil

p.s. No, I don't use Timemachine or other perpetual backup systems that might be out there. I'm hoping the original iPhoto layout/organization data I had is in a folder somewhere in my system...?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

It sounds like when you pressed Command-A, you were actually in an all photos view, which selected your entire library. The "damage" to your iPhoto Library was done when you pulled the power plug - never a good option unless the Mac is totally frozen and your keyboard and mouse cannot perform any actions. Because the power was cut, the operation didn't complete, so it corrupted the iPhoto Library index.

Unfortunately, since you do not have any Time Machine or other backup, there isn't any way that I know of to recover the previous state. You will have to manually move the photos back to their original places.

Sorry for the bad news,

C

 

[Phil Foster]

Hello,

It sounds like when you pressed Command-A, you were actually in an all photos view, which selected your entire library. The "damage" to your iPhoto Library was done when you pulled the power plug - never a good option unless the Mac is totally frozen and your keyboard and mouse cannot perform any actions. Because the power was cut, the operation didn't complete, so it corrupted the iPhoto Library index.

Unfortunately, since you do not have any Time Machine or other backup, there isn't any way that I know of to recover the previous state. You will have to manually move the photos back to their original places.

Sorry for the bad news,

C

Thanks so much Cory for the reply,
Yea, I figured when I hit the power button (hoping to simply interrupt the operation) that I was just creating yet another problem. Wish I knew how to interrupt the action iPhoto was attempting, but no keyboard activity seemed to respond. ------
Yup, I'll begin the daunting task of creating new folders and reorganizing 8000 photo's (some 15 years) by hand.
Part of my challenge is recalling and relabeling everything... especially knowing what year they were taken.
Which leads me to one more question: I understand that all photos have metadata imbedded (so this will help me know what YEAR they were taken). --- While in iPhoto, I did a COMMAND + i (get info), and iPhoto did pop open a right side window with data on the photo, including the date (month & day)... BUT NOT the YEAR. ! How can I find the all important year of creation? Is there some sort of additional "deeper" data to access, or some feature I am not utilizing in acquiring info?
My thanks,
Phil