how to fix "Your photo library is damaged or unreadable and cannot be opened. Please restore from a backup." please help me?

Did the same thing for me too!!!

Went back into My book to a date I new that iphoto worked, dragged it into iphoto icon...received the same message. Do I delete the iphoto app and create a new one then proceed?

Ok. I now know the solution. It is not necessarily pretty, but it works. Do the following:

1. Restore your iPhoto library

2. Start iPhoto while holding down the option key and create a new library

3. right click on your restored iphoto library

4. click on "show package contents." This opens the contents of your library.

5. Find the folder called "masters" and drag it over your iPhoto icon in the bar at bottom of the screen. This will take all of your original and unedited files and replace them into iPhoto as one huge import. You then have to rebuild your folders, events, etc.

That is starting over and will work - but in very, very few cases is it necessary - usually the existing library can be repaired using either iPhoto's first aid measures of iPhoto Library Manager - http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/ - rebuild

LN

Thanks for posting this solution. I was ging a little nuts after updating iPhoto 10 to 11. Is don't know what is going on with this new version but it certainly had messed up a lot of users' files.

I kept trying to restore my library with and old Time Machine backup but every time I did that, the same thing happened: an alert message saying my file could not be opened because blah, blah, blah, followed by another message saying that my "iPhoto library was damaged..." You know the rest. I did that twice before finding your post.

It would be nice if Apple could have proviced these instructions, instead of telling everyone to restore from a backup. This was a big help. Thanks for posting it.

CF

It tells you what to do: Restore from your back up

Regards

TD

I had the same problem, but when I restore from a backup it does the same thing.

What version of iPhoto?

Do you get the "UPDATING THUMBNAILS" message above first? If so, try and click on that befor the other window pops up. iPhoto should opne normally after that and you can see all your pictures..