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Helpful answers
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by LarryHN,Aug 30, 2016 9:52 PM in response to Rebecca Jallings
LarryHN
Aug 30, 2016 9:52 PM
in response to Rebecca Jallings
Level 10 (84,185 points)
Photos for MacNot really
You can have as many or few libraries are you want - Photos does not control that, it is totally up to you
Typically one library is all you need and by far the best idea
And iCloud is not a backup - it is a sync service and can only be used with one library designated the system library
You need to provide many more details about what you have and what you want as your current desires are not possible and it is not even clear what you have
LN
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Aug 30, 2016 10:18 PM in response to Rebecca Jallingsby léonie,iCloud Photo Library can only be used for one Photos Library, the library you enable as your System Photo Library in the Photos Preferences > General.
Where is your main Photos Library that you want to use with iCloud? By default, Photos will be expecting your System Photo Library to be in your Pictures folder. It can be on an external drive, but this drive must have the file system MacOS Extended (Journaled) and must not be on a NAS, a drive used by Time Machine, or in any synced folder, like Dropbox, GoogleDrive, or iCloud Drive.
If your Photos Library is in an unsupported location, Photos will refuse to open it and create a new library in your Pictures folder. Can it be, that Photos created the additional libraries, because your library is in an unsupported location?
This Help page explains how to set up iCloud Photo Library with Photos:
https://help.apple.com/photos/mac/1.2/?lang=en#/phtf5e48489c
And see this page on how to manage multiple Photos Libraries:
https://help.apple.com/photos/mac/1.2/?lang=en#/pht6d60b524
What I want is maybe 3 or 4 with separate content areas, and I want them all backed up on iCloud.
You can structure your library with folders and albums.
If you put the items for the separate content areas in sets of albums, you can group the album list by creating folders for the albums.
For example, I have albums for each day of shooting photos, and these albums are grouped in nested folders. In the Photos sidebar they are easily accessible: by closing all folders but the one I am working on, I can focus on the relevant albums.
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Aug 30, 2016 10:21 PM in response to LarryHNby Rebecca Jallings,I know I can have as many libraries as I want. The issue is that I had 3 and now I have like 12. I am pretty sure a number of them are copies of each other. I'd like to merge them. How do I do that?
Thanks for the advice about iCloud. I knew that once and forgot it...again.
I just had all my photos digitalized which makes one library difficult because they cannot be organized by date. I thought maybe 3 libraries: one for work photos that I rarely need to look at now that I am retired, one for the past 2 generations of family photos, and one for old family photos that I also won't need to look at often.
I know you can only work on one library at a time, which is fine. I won't be going back and forth much.
