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I accidentally deleted ALL the folders and albums for 20 years and in my own media library! Help me?!

Good day.

After the system update, I tried to set up shared albums and due to the unintuitive interface of the PHOTOS app, I decided that all my folders and albums that I had created before were available to my partner,

so I deleted them, (as I thought, from the shared media library).

Then, it turned out that I had deleted ALL the folders and albums for 20 years and in my own media library!

Now they are located as separate files in the "imports" section but without their folders and albums!!

I really need to restore them to the same folders and albums structure as they were in my media library a week ago.

Help me?!

iMac 27″

Posted on Oct 23, 2023 12:17 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Oct 23, 2023 12:28 PM

#1 - Do you have Time Machine enabled and backing up?

#2 - Do you have iCloud Library enabled?


If Yes to the #1 and No to #2 then you can get them back by entering Time Machine, going back in time to just before you did the deletions, selecting the library and Restore it.



5 replies

Oct 24, 2023 8:42 AM in response to golub4ik

You'll need an external drive, about 2-2 ½ times the size of what you're backing up and it can be used from only Time Machine. An excellent unit for TM is this OWC Mercury Elite Pro -HDD. OWC is considered the premier 3rd party hardware supplier for Macs.


If you value your data then you must have a backup strategy and Time Machine is very good at what it does.


I'm afraid without a backup there's nothing you can do but rebuild your folder and album infrastructure.


The first thing you should do is get a backup drive and strategy.



I accidentally deleted ALL the folders and albums for 20 years and in my own media library! Help me?!

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