Photos won't open iPhoto library.

Hi, léonie.

It sates that the photos have already been brought into Photos and then the app opens but nothing seems to be there other than its window with a blank background and four icons with four options showing: (1) Connect a camera or memory card, (2) Drag pictures directly into Photos, (3) Choose Import from the file menu and (4) Turn iCloud Photo Library in Preferences.

I've tried it twice but can't seem to make it work. In answer to your questions, my library is located in an external 2TB SSD drive because its size is such that it wouldn't fit in my internal drive. The drive was formatted as Mac OS X Extended Journaled and it is not used with Time Machine.

Any idea as what may be causing it and how to fix it ?

Thank you for your reply to my posts and for your recommendations.

Joe.

Thank you, léonie.

I did exactly what you suggested. I changed the name and this time Photos started to process the old iPhone library converting it to a new Photos library. Once finished the app created a new Photos Library folder inside my Pictures folder. However, when I click either on the iPhoto library with the new .photolibrary extension or the new Photos library created by the app the result is the same - the same blank window appears in Photos and the app doesn't have any photos in it.

Do you have any ideas why Photos is doing this ?

Thank you again for your help.

Hi, léonie.

I tried it several times but couldn't get it to work. Although the libraries are there Photos won't display the photos and appears to be empty. To clarify my post after I followed your recommendation Photos did indeed create a new library but after I tried and it didn't work I moved it to my desktop thinking it might be corrupted and tried again. The library was in fact created on the same external SSD drive. I am sorry for not being clear in my post.

I have since then deleted all libraries from my computer. The original library is still preserved outside of my computer in 2 back up RAIDs I have so everything is safe. Since I couldn't get Photos to work I read several threads here on Apple's own support site and decided to install iPhoto. It did open the library and it worked fine allowing me to add photos I had stored in my iPhone.

Now I have run into two problems:

1. I had some problems with videos. Last night my computer (a brand new, 1-month old Mac Pro running OS X El Capitan) and iPhotos refused to import videos from my iPhone. The photos were fine but the videos simply couldn't be downloaded for some reason. This morning I tried again and this time the import seemed to have worked. As I sync the videos with 2 iPads I own (a 1st generation and a 3rd generation iPads) I can't seem to see the videos there under photos. I read one thread where you mentioned to another posters something about a file that needs to be re-written because it seems to be the culprit of the problem. I believe the name of the file is 'com.apple.xpchelper.cache'.

2. I don't know how to migrate my library from iPhoto to Photos. I would like to migrate before I experience problems with iPhoto or before there is a problem with my database since the app is no longer upgraded by Apple. How can I migrate my library to Photos ?

Thank you for your help.