iphoto 11 spinning wheel

Hi piper, did you solve your problem? I am having the exact same issue as you reported and was keen to get your feedback before I attempt the many solutions reported, thanks

Hello Piper05,

I have exactly the same problem.

I am using iPhoto Library manager to work with multiple libraries, because I got to much photos for a single library, it's getting a little to complex.
I removed the preferences files - no change

I tried a empty library and copy the images - no change

I can convert older libraries without problem, but I can't reopen the library after...

No managed fonts, no system font disabled... it simply *****. the old iPhoto 8.1.2 opens older, not converted libraries without problems, but all converted libraries won't open in iPhoto 9.2.1

I got the empty black window with the missing left menue - where events, photos or shared pictures or albums are listed, like in the Picture of Piper05.

And nothing happens... I am really clueless, any help would be of great advice.

I've been trying to upgrade to iPhoto 11 for a few days and it never managed to convert the library to the new format... I was getting the spinning wheel for hours. I've tried all kinds of tricks found on the web and none of them helped. I renamed the Library to another name to boot without library and it finally started but it was still dog slow... I checked the CPU utilization and iPhoto was low. But I saw the mds process in top cpu users again and again. So I went to the System Preferences and in the Spotlight preferences, I've added my Pictures directory in the privacy tab. Suddenly iPhoto was much faster. Stopped it and restored the old library and it converted it to the new format very quickly and now I'm an happy user of iPhoto 2011 ! 🙂

Hope this helps for other users too...

Hi Im having the same problem, but How can I backup my photos if I cant even get into iphoto? All I get is the spinning ball...............any help would be great. thank you

That did it for me. Thanks Old Toad

I did a repair permissions - that didn't fix it, then I did a repair disk, and that did it for me.