Ok, After 4 days, and one false start, I managed to get my meticulously organized & keyworded Library rebuilt on an EHD using iPLM... except now all of my events are fractured, some are out of order & all of my keywords are gone! Given that I'm now having to lay eyes on literally tens of thousands of photos, is there any way to repair this? I'd give just about anything to get back my keywords!
iMac (21.5-inch Late 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.4), iLife 09
The keywords are kept in the file titled Keywords.plist.
As a test you can locate that file in the old library and replace the keywords.plist file in the rebuild library with it to see if that will bring the keywords back. Keep the file that you're replacing in case the test doesn't work.
I've looked & can't find anything labeled keywords.plist. Where exactly is it & how do I find it? Do you mean Keywords.ipmeta?
It's in the Database folder:
I'm surprised that your iPLM rebuild didn't preserve the keywords. Ran a test with a small library of mine and the keywords were preserved. You library must have had more extensive damage.
Are you working from iPhoto 11? When I look for a folder labeled Database, this is all I find inside of it:
It's the only Database folder that shows up on my computer.
The database folder is inside the iPhoto LIbrary package. Open the package like this:
I'm guessing that because I have no such file (Keywords.plist) that they're totally missing... this is my original Library:
And this is the rebuilt one:
I'm sorry to be so difficult. I'm in over my head & I really appreciate the help.
We've been talking apples and oranges here. My screenshots are for iPhoto 9 (11). The file you want to try to replace is Keywords.ipmeta located in the Metadata Backup folder. Try using that file in the rebuild library. You can open it with TextEdit to see if the keywords are listed in there first.
There's about 12 random Keywords there, out of over 40 I used to have. I know they're not all "stock" (like the "movie" & "raw" Keywords), because they also include the names of my son & my dog.
iPhoto really got mangled, I guess. Thanks for trying to help. Think of me if you get frustrated in the next week or so. I'll be reapplying multiple keywords to each of 50k+ photos. Again. And putting them back in chronological order. Again.
At least I'll know where to look if it ever happens again, right? :-)
If you don't already have a backup stragety in place maybe it's time to do so. Using an external HD (formatted OS X Extended (journaled) with Time Machine is an excellent way to recover from problems like this. Eventually all HDs will crash or have problems so best to be prepared.
Rebuilt library keywords
