I have loads of photos backed up onto an external hard drive using Photos 5, but now my mac has updated its photos app to Photos 7, I can't open the app. What's the best solution please? Any help appreciated.
Earlier Mac models
First-- do you have a backup? You should make a backup before messing around with your Photos Library!
You're using Monterey, now-- is that correct?
What to you mean by "I can't open the app?" You can't open Photos 5 on Monterey? That makes sense. You shouldn't even have Photos 5 in Monterey. A new version of Photos has a new database-- think an excel spreadsheet with more columns. Then a new, more columns data set doesn't make sense to the older database.
Or do you mean that you can't open Photos 7 on Monterey? That would be odd. In either case, what happens when you double click on the Photos 7 app?
What happens when you close Photos and double click on your (backed up) old Photos Library? What I would expect is that Photos would recognize the old version and add the necessary columns so it's readable by the new database-- and then open it so you can see pictures. What actually happens?
First-- do you have a backup? You should make a backup before messing around with your Photos Library!
You're using Monterey, now-- is that correct?
What to you mean by "I can't open the app?" You can't open Photos 5 on Monterey? That makes sense. You shouldn't even have Photos 5 in Monterey. A new version of Photos has a new database-- think an excel spreadsheet with more columns. Then a new, more columns data set doesn't make sense to the older database.
Or do you mean that you can't open Photos 7 on Monterey? That would be odd. In either case, what happens when you double click on the Photos 7 app?
What happens when you close Photos and double click on your (backed up) old Photos Library? What I would expect is that Photos would recognize the old version and add the necessary columns so it's readable by the new database-- and then open it so you can see pictures. What actually happens?
Did you by any chance back up the Photos.app on the external drive and not the PhotosLibrary?
Photos 5 has been storing the photos in a Photos Library, not inside the Photos.app.
Look for an item with an iCon like this - as stack or fan of three pictures showing the rainbow flower and the filename extension .photoslibrary . Then use Photos 7 to open this Photos Library.
Accessing an old version of photos
