I DO NOT USE icloud photo - MY 6,000 photos were organized in Alphabetical albums since 2009 all of a sudden all my photos look like contacts and no titles captions of albums - what happend? Can someone tell me easy understandable for a "non technical person" to get my organized ( albums back ( past 16 years )all of ehich have been on my latest 2023 lap top . Thnx
MacBook Air, macOS 14.8
caninemiss wrote: …what happend?
Of course, no one here was there with you, so we can't tell you what happened.
Can someone tell me easy understandable for a "non technical person" to get my organized ( albums back ( past 16 years )all of ehich have been on my latest 2023 lap top
A. I would suggest that you just restore from your Time Machine backup:
Time Machine Restores a Photos Library - Apple Community
B. If you don't use Time Machine, then you should restore from whatever backup system you use.
C. If you can't do that, it sounds like you could use Smart Albums to do this organizing for you. I don't know what you alphabetized, but you could use something like this:
to collect similar pictures into albums. Or you can collect by date. You can use the Map view to collect pictures by location. Here I've put all the pictures from London in the Map view into an album called London, and then searched for a range of dates:
D. Are you sure you are looking at the same Library? Sometimes a sudden change in a a Library is really from switching to a different one. You should open the Library Chooser to check. Close Photos, and then option-click on the Photos icon to get this dialog:
You can see which is your System Library, what you used last, and see if you have any other Libraries that Photos knows about.
By the way, using iCloud isn't a reliable backup for blunders, since it just copies those, too. iCloud Photos is for sharing pictures with other devices like iPhones. Time Machine is probably the easiest and best backup. I use that, and I make copies of my Library to external drives, both A and B above.
caninemiss wrote: …what happend?
Of course, no one here was there with you, so we can't tell you what happened.
Can someone tell me easy understandable for a "non technical person" to get my organized ( albums back ( past 16 years )all of ehich have been on my latest 2023 lap top
A. I would suggest that you just restore from your Time Machine backup:
Time Machine Restores a Photos Library - Apple Community
B. If you don't use Time Machine, then you should restore from whatever backup system you use.
C. If you can't do that, it sounds like you could use Smart Albums to do this organizing for you. I don't know what you alphabetized, but you could use something like this:
to collect similar pictures into albums. Or you can collect by date. You can use the Map view to collect pictures by location. Here I've put all the pictures from London in the Map view into an album called London, and then searched for a range of dates:
D. Are you sure you are looking at the same Library? Sometimes a sudden change in a a Library is really from switching to a different one. You should open the Library Chooser to check. Close Photos, and then option-click on the Photos icon to get this dialog:
You can see which is your System Library, what you used last, and see if you have any other Libraries that Photos knows about.
By the way, using iCloud isn't a reliable backup for blunders, since it just copies those, too. iCloud Photos is for sharing pictures with other devices like iPhones. Time Machine is probably the easiest and best backup. I use that, and I make copies of my Library to external drives, both A and B above.
caninemiss wrote: …Where do I find this choice to view libraries I may have
You should open the Library Chooser to check. Close Photos, and then option-click on the Photos icon to get this dialog:
someone afraid to dig or go far into "library settings:
I haven't mentioned any Library settings. I did suggest a Smart Album available at the menu
"File>New Smart Album…
I don't know how to use Seagate back up
I don't either, and I wouldn't use it. I delete those things when a new hard drive.
Is your Library located on an external drive? And how is your external drive formatted? To avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. The drive must be connected directly to the Mac by cable, not networked, clouded, NASed, etc. Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted. There have been so many problems with using incompatible drives that the newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open, since there is a chance of damaging the Photos database. See this:
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
If this drive is in a an incompatible format, stop running Photos with it immediately! A Photos Library can sit on an incompatible drive, but running it may corrupt the database.
If you need to re-format a drive, this is how you format a drive using Disk Utility:
Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
As the title suggests, everything on a drive is erased when it is formatted, so you may need another drive to put your files during the formatting.
Thank you, RICHARD T: for the excellent explanation and the DESCRIPTIVE PHOTOS I AM STILL AFRAID TO POKE AROUND -
Where do I find this choice to view libraries I may have - all my photos look just like a bunch of contacts and there is no website to click on - Just a bunch of "contacts" on my screen - Any more suggestions for someone afraid to dig or go far into "library settings: or anything like that (I would never do on my own) and I don't know how to use Seagate back up other than plug it in and let it do its thing - to back up THNX AGAIN!
My photos are no longer in their albums (do not use nor want icloud)
