empty folders in folders with pics after using iPhoto (and Photos)

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Level 1

123 points

empty folders in folders with pics after using iPhoto (and Photos)

Hi,

I tried Photos a few weeks ago and don't like it. I had migrated one iPhoto library over to Photos and then trashed it as I didn't want to use it anymore. Ok, all is fine.

Today I decided to use iPhoto to import all my pics from my cameras (about 19,000 pictures) into a new iPhoto library. That went fine. Now I see that there are empty folders in almost all of the folders that had pictures in them in addition to the pictures themselves since I didn't copy any pictures into the new iPhoto library.

My question is why did all these empty folders appear? They have names like this:

P3220001-3 (folder)

P3220001.JPG (pic)

P3220002-3 (floder)

P3220002.JPG (pic)

etc, etc.

All of my pics are fine so that's good.

Is this some weird after-effect of having Photos on my computer? Will future uses of iPhoto do this?

I can delete them all. It will be laborious and take time. I just wonder if it will happen again and why it happened in the first place.

Thanks for any help.

Cheers,

John

OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on May 8, 2015 7:04 PM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,314 points

May 8, 2015 11:48 PM in response to lipwak

Where are you seeing these?

iPhoto as no certain future beyond 10.10.

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Answer 2

lipwak Author

Level 1

123 points

May 9, 2015 9:51 AM in response to Yer_Man

They're showing up in the folders that the pictures are in.

Yeah, I know Apple is going to abandon iPhoto. That's ok.

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Answer 3

lipwak Author

Level 1

123 points

May 27, 2015 12:14 PM in response to lipwak

I fixed it, as far as I can tell, with this: Find Empty Folders. It deleted about 14,000 empty folders.

I still don't know why it happened. Not a big deal though as I probably won't be using Photos anyway.

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Answer 4

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,314 points

May 27, 2015 12:22 PM in response to lipwak

1. Empty folders take up no space. Literally. They're just an icon.

2. Remember never allow any app to change anything in the iPhoto Library - it risks damaging the library and deleting your data - that is your precious photos.

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Answer 5

lipwak Author

Level 1

123 points

May 27, 2015 12:34 PM in response to Yer_Man

Yeah. In this case it was a pain to have all those folders mixed in with my pics so they needed to go. I had Photos link to my pics so there should be no loss to my pics. And since I'm not going to be using that, or any other Photos libraries anymore, I trashed it. As far as I can tell, all my pics are fine. (I also checked the trash to be sure the folders were empty. Scrolled though 14,000 open folders in list view...)

I drag and drop all my pics from my camera into folders as needed. It's worked for me this long and will continue to until Apple throws me a curve.

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