there was an error adding the selected items to a shared photos album

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Level 1

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there was an error adding the selected items to a shared photos album

i have a shared album that i am adding photos to. for an odd reason, some of the photos cannot be added to this particular shared album. a screenshot of the error is below.

i have tried:

using drag and drop, which leads to the "there was an error adding..." error message.
waiting a bit and then trying again. same error.
right clicking, choosing "share..." and choosing shared albums from the pop up menu, then selecting the desired album. this too errors, but with a different error ('this operation could not be completed...').
trying another photo by selecting a photo taken on the same device with the same settings, either a moment before or a moment after, and adding that to the album. that always works.
adding the erroring photo to another shared album instead. that sometimes works(!) when it worked i then tried adding the photo the desired shared album, again got the same error.
going to my iphone, scrolling and scrolling, finding the right photo, then using share menu to adding the photo to the shared album. that works.
i have tried opening the offending photo in edit mode, click 'revert to original', and tried uploading its unmodified state. that works. but when i then edit the photo again (using photo's built in tools, upping, brilliance, raising shadow, cropping), and try again to upload to the album. and that fails. regardless of what edits i make.

this error happens to multiple photos. i am not aware of any obvious distinction between photos that succeed and photos that fail to add to the shared album, but see it more with photos from iphone than from my (nikon dslr) dedicated camera.

i shoot a lot of photos of each scene i capture so i have a number of shots that are similar, but i am particular about which one i want to share and how it is cropped etc.

and i much prefer working on and with my photos on my mac over on my phone.

2019 macbook pro, macos ventura 13.4.1 (22F82).

Posted on Jul 8, 2023 07:22 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

agila Author

Level 1

11 points

Jul 9, 2023 04:11 PM in response to léonie

hello léonie, and thank you for your prompt reply.

thank you for sharing the link to the limits of the icloud photo uploads and shared album counts.

i had indeed recently added a large number of photos to my library. i still think i am well below all limits listed on that page.

in any event, a number of days have passed since i uploaded these and i have not been uploading much since i got back from the trip. i still have issues uploading some photos in this shared album, while some photos (older, newer) do upload without a hitch.

i counted and i do have around 150 shared albums (more than i expected, these numbers creep up on you) but well below the stated limit of 200.

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Answer 2

oooskar

Level 1

17 points

Sep 17, 2023 09:50 AM in response to agila

I experience the exact same problem quite often. My photos are in RAW (more particularly RW2 from a Panasonic GH5). What happens is that for some photos, if I make edits I cannot share them. Other photos for which I have not made edits (for example the photo taken just before or after) works to share as they should. They are of course in the same RW2 format so it has nothing to do with that.

Sometimes it helps to leave the Photos programme on while I do something else, which may trigger an iCloud sync. Just a few minutes ago there was one particular photo that was not possible to add to my shared album, but as I was finding this forum post and writing this message it worked again.

My speculation is therefore that it was some iCloud preview or something that was not updated, but the error message "There was an error adding the selected items" is really not helpful at all. It would be great if the message could be more descriptive.

Is it possible to tell Photos to sync to iCloud on-demand, or do you always have to wait for it to happen in the background at some unknown time interval?

I also have a MacBook Pro 16" 2019, and this error remains after updating from Ventura 13.5.1 to 13.5.2.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

199,927 points

Jul 10, 2023 03:48 AM in response to agila

Have you tested the photos that cannot be shared to a shared album, if there is any problem with them?

Can you export them from Photos as the unmodified original? Can you export the edited version?

You amy want to check the exported original with Preview or another editor, if there is something special about the original, for example an older color sync profile, that is no longer supported on your current system version.

Or perhaps the current copy in your Photos Library is damaged in some way.

As a test, export the unmodified original, delete it completely from Photos, including Recently Deleted, then try to import it again. Do you get an error message when you try to reimport?

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

199,927 points

Jul 9, 2023 04:01 AM in response to agila

How many photos have you recently uploaded? Did you exceed any of the limits? iCloud: My Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Sharing limits. Then you will just have to wait before you can upload again any new photos.

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Answer 5

agila Author

Level 1

11 points

Sep 17, 2023 10:06 AM in response to oooskar

thanks for the response oooskar.

i have also noticed that sometimes a mere wait can fix the problem. that is annoying as it is exactly when i have just loaded photos into the library and am working with them, making edits and cropping, is exactly when i want to assign photos to albums and shared resources.

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there was an error adding the selected items to a shared photos album

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