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"The file could not be opened because it is empty"

I have trouble successfully transferring photos and movies from Photos on my M1 MacBook Pro to my external hard drive since "the file could not be opened because it is empty", and I would love to use help solving the following problem.


The problem is that the transferred files I select and scroll to move from Photos to the external hard drive don't seem to have any bytes (data) to be shown as photos or movies in Preview. At first, I had no clue what was going on with this error, but when I checked the information about the files on both Photos and external hard drive, those on iPhotos have their own bytes (so of course the files open) . However, the information about those transferred files say none of them have any bytes.


FYI, if I simply copy and paste the files onto the external hard drive, those files have bytes and do open. But the files are not placed in a chronological order (I mean, the date of those photos and movies are taken).


Thank you in advance and I hope to have this issue solved anytime soon with your help.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.5

Posted on Sep 2, 2021 9:22 PM

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3 replies

Sep 2, 2021 10:25 PM in response to Orlando-tkhr

Currently Big Sur 11.5.2 Photos.app has an, erm, feature where it exports 0 byte files to non-Mac filesystems like exFAT or FAT (AFAIR this issue is with .jpeg, .tiff and .png, not with exported originals).


So either reformat the external disk as MacOS Extended (Journaled) if it is HDD or APFS if it is SSD. Or first export to such volume and then Finder-copy elsewhere.

"The file could not be opened because it is empty"

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