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"Malformed Library"

I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard. Now, in iPhoto Library Manager, I have suddenly encountered the error message "The album data file for this library is malformed." The message continues about an unknown ampersand at a certain line.

At first I thought it was related to the pictures I was working with, obtained from a friend to construct a wedding montage project. But now the problem has popped up in a second library with pictures I have used in the past with no problem.

I have conducted a search and I understand the premise behind the "malformed Database" but I can't help wondering if this is related to SL since I have never encountered this problem before. I checked the iPhoto Library Manager website and nothing is mentioned there but I'd be curious to know if others are having this problem.

Mac Pro 2x2.66 Dual-Core Intel Xeon, Mac OS X (10.6), iLife '09, Apeture, Photoshop, Nikon D80 and Canon HD-30

Posted on Oct 30, 2009 6:43 PM

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Posted on Oct 30, 2009 7:56 PM

Check your album and event names for the ampersand in the title. Also do a search in the lower text search box for the ampersand character. If you find it change it or, if it's a photo, export it to the desktop, delete it from iPhoto, rename in the Finder to remove the ampersand and reimport.
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Oct 30, 2009 7:56 PM in response to alice_srq

Check your album and event names for the ampersand in the title. Also do a search in the lower text search box for the ampersand character. If you find it change it or, if it's a photo, export it to the desktop, delete it from iPhoto, rename in the Finder to remove the ampersand and reimport.

Oct 31, 2009 7:47 AM in response to Old Toad

Thanks OT. I did have an ampersand in the folder that contains the pictures for one of the projects. I changed that and it made no difference. All of my pictures have their original titles so there are no ampersands in the titles. I checked the help section of iPhoto Library Manager and printed out their suggestions re AlbumData.xml files which suggests opening the AlbumData.xml with a word processing program and running a search to the line that is noted in the iPhoto Library Manager error message. I went to one of the offending libraries, opened the package contents and I was about to open the AlbumData.xml files using Text Wrangler when I noted in the "Kind" column that this is a Final Cut Express XML File. I checked my other libraries and they all show this. It makes no sense to me and I wonder if this could be part of the problem? I have an iMac as well as the Mac Pro and even though I never use the iMac for graphic projects any more I still have iPhoto loaded on it. When I checked the AlbumData.xml files on the iMac iPhoto they were listed as Word files.

Any thoughts?

Oct 31, 2009 8:07 AM in response to alice_srq

r when I noted in the "Kind" column that this is a Final Cut Express XML File.


and

I checked the AlbumData.xml files on the iMac iPhoto they were listed as Word files.


Mean absolutely nothing. All that's telling you is that FCE is set as the default app to open xml files on one machine and Word is on the other. It doesn't matter. Open with TW or your preferred Text Editor.

Regards

TD

"Malformed Library"

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