Could not share photos to shared album

Question

Level 1

1 points

Could not share photos to shared album

I hope somebody can help with this. In the Photos app (not iPhoto) I am unable to add photos to a shared album. The following error occurs: Could not share photos to shared album “[album name here]”.

This happens frequently when I try to add multiple photos to a shared album (anything over 4 or 5 it seems), which is pretty unworkable as I've got a photo library of 29,000 and I want to share a lot of them across multiple shared albums.

Any ideas? I've tried:

deleting shared albums
creating new shared albums
adding photos from different albums to shared albums
playing around with who a shared album is shared with (including sharing with nobody)
turning on/off the subscribers, public website and notifications options
confirming that there's no difference between file type, big size difference or difference in resolution. They're also all taken on the same DSLR.

The attached screenshot was from trying to add only 35 photos from one album to a single shared album.

I've got about 200GB left on my iCloud account, so space shouldn't be a problem.
iCloud photo sharing on.
Internet is working fine, 152Mb down, 15Mb up.
MBP Retina, Yosemite 10.10.3, 290GB free on SSD

Thanks to anybody who can advise!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), null

Posted on Jun 24, 2015 11:16 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Jun 13, 2017 5:51 AM in response to RiskyBob

I was unable to open a shared album on OS X that was already working on iOS (it would say "The Shared Photo Streams operation could not be completed" when I tried accepting the invitation) and this worked perfectly for me. Thanks!

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Answer 2

Jul 12, 2015 8:52 AM in response to RiskyBob

I have this problem too.

It is certain picture files that cause the problem. If you exclude the problem files, then the rest upload OK. But that is not a practical solution to the problem.

I have noticed that it seems to be large files that have been taken by a Nikon DSLR. However I have not investigated beyond this, since it is not my problem!

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Answer 3

Jul 25, 2015 11:11 AM in response to panieldoon

I have this same problem too, and cannot find any solution. The new photos app is very disappointing, in many respects. I think it was certainly not ready for release at the time of release!

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Answer 4

RiskyBob Author

Level 1

1 points

Jul 25, 2015 11:23 AM in response to RiskyBob

I gave up on this but have since found out about the 'repair' function in Photos. This was most likely a feature in iPhoto too, but not 100% sure.

Holding down command + option/alt keys when clicking on the Photos app (in Launchpad, not the dock) will launch the repair function - see attached screenshot.

This helped with with a different issue that I had. I'm hoping it fixes the 'could not share photos' per my original post. Some day I'll try it!

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Answer 5

Jul 25, 2015 11:54 AM in response to Alex Shum

In my case it proved to be 2 "broken" images, which were sony rx100m4 raw files, that are as yet unsupported by apple raw engine. The folder contained around 300 of them at the time of import, but for some reason Photos attempted to process and added only 2 of 300 to the library, and they were "broken", thumbnails with distorted image, and displayed big exclamation mark if tried to be opened for view. Buggy.

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Answer 6

Jul 26, 2015 1:55 AM in response to Alex Shum

What is most annoying is that there is virtually zero feedback on the iCloud sharing process: you add 300 images to a shared album, Photos app reports "sharing 300 photos" in the activity icon, then everything falls silent. One supposes that the sharing completed successfully, and now one just has to wait for upload to complete, but WRONG: the next day outcome: only 130 images shared, with no error message, silently. Very disappointing.

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Answer 7

léonie

Level 10

200,789 points

Jul 26, 2015 2:06 AM in response to Alex Shum

If some photos upload, but not all you may have exceeded one of the Sharing Limits. Shared albums do not count against your iCloud storage, but there are limits to the upload rate and the maximum number of photos in an album:

See this link: My Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Sharing limits - Apple Support

If it is not the upload limits, you may have included a video or photo that cannot be processed and that is blocking the upload.

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Answer 8

Jul 26, 2015 3:31 AM in response to léonie

I am aware about the limits, and I have not reached them. But thank you for reminding about it, because so far as I remember, I once reached the limits, and Photos app just did not upload anything, silently, again. I had to go to Aperture to find out that the limits were reached, since Aperture does bring up the notification about the limits. That was in the 1st release version of Photos app, maybe they introduced the notification since then, but I seriously doubt it, given the whole "just works when it works, but when it does not, it just does not" approach. I repeat that I am not at all satisfied with how the new Photos app performs.

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Answer 9

Oct 15, 2016 10:40 AM in response to RiskyBob

This worked for me too. Thank you for posting.

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