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User profile for user: hlritter
hlritter Author
User level: Level 1
57 points

Unable to share photos from iPhone

When I view photos in the Camera app on my iPhone 6S Plus by tapping the icon in the lower left corner (Camera Roll?) and try to share (Air Drop, Mail, Message) some photos taken on a trip in April, I get a text box that says "Unable to share. There was an error while preparing to share. Please try again later." Of course, repeating the attempt from time to time over a period of weeks, I get the same message. This fault occurs with every photo on my phone taken before a certain point on that trip, and none after. The earliest photo that can be shared and the latest photo that can't were taken minutes apart. (There's one exception, a single video taken a week before the first photo that's shareable. And that video on the iPhone now appears out of chronological order, inserted into a series of photos taken a month later!) All of the unshareable photos and videos appear to display/play normally on the iPhone.


Then in the Photos Library folder in the Pictures folder in the home directory on the MacBook that I use with the iPhone, with the iPhone tethered and freshly synced, I discovered that there is an entire year of iPhone photos missing – starting in April 2016 and continuing to April 2017 with the earliest photo that I can share. (I acquired the current iPhone well before the start of this gap, and the laptop well before that.) I thought this was a clue to a fault that was causing both problems – but then I found that none of the photos that appear in the Photos Library taken prior to the year's gap can be shared from the iPhone either! Still more confusing is that, in the period prior to the 1-year gap, some photos that appear in Photos Library are no longer on my iPhone, the same one I took them on, and vice-versa. Some of these that are missing from the iPhone I may have deleted, but not all, and I think that would cause them to be deleted from the Library.


Clearly something is extremely screwed up, and I have no idea what, or how to fix it. And there are a few hundred photos on the phone that I want to get onto the computer for organizing into an album.


Suggestions?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), 500 GB SSD

Posted on Jun 11, 2017 9:59 PM

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User profile for user: hlritter
hlritter Author
User level: Level 1
57 points

Posted on Jun 12, 2017 6:57 AM

As described in my original post, there's no difficulty in sharing many of the photos. There has never been a problem Air Dropping to my laptop or my iMac until this problem arose last month, and there's still no difficulty sharing the photos taken after late April.


The problem isn't incompatibility. The "Unable to Share" message appears as soon as I touch not only the Air Drop, but also the Message, or the Email button after selecting the photo to share. Obviously, sending a message or email would be insensitive to what computer I would be receiving the photo on.


Interestingly, after I posted last night I discovered that if I view the photos on the iPhone not through the Camera app but through the Photos app, I CAN share them! I don't get the Unable to Share message with AirDrop or with the Message or Email methods. Also, when I use the Photos app on my IMac, ALL of the photos that I can't find by directly opening up the Photos Library on the computer are there! On my MacBook, the explanation of the missing photos turns out to be that Photos on that computer was not set to use iCloud. I corrected this, and the missing photos are now downloading.


I suspect that this explains why I can't share the older photos directly from the camera roll, that it may have to do with storage of low-res versions of older photos on the camera roll for offline viewing, while the full-res versions are uploaded to iCloud. And it's these iCloud versions that are accessed by the Photos app both on the iPhone and on the iMac.


I appreciate your suggestion of the app. I'd check it out, but now it looks like it won't be necessary. Thanks for speaking up!


Howard

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4 replies
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User profile for user: hlritter
hlritter Author
User level: Level 1
57 points

Jun 12, 2017 6:57 AM in response to Zack.d

As described in my original post, there's no difficulty in sharing many of the photos. There has never been a problem Air Dropping to my laptop or my iMac until this problem arose last month, and there's still no difficulty sharing the photos taken after late April.


The problem isn't incompatibility. The "Unable to Share" message appears as soon as I touch not only the Air Drop, but also the Message, or the Email button after selecting the photo to share. Obviously, sending a message or email would be insensitive to what computer I would be receiving the photo on.


Interestingly, after I posted last night I discovered that if I view the photos on the iPhone not through the Camera app but through the Photos app, I CAN share them! I don't get the Unable to Share message with AirDrop or with the Message or Email methods. Also, when I use the Photos app on my IMac, ALL of the photos that I can't find by directly opening up the Photos Library on the computer are there! On my MacBook, the explanation of the missing photos turns out to be that Photos on that computer was not set to use iCloud. I corrected this, and the missing photos are now downloading.


I suspect that this explains why I can't share the older photos directly from the camera roll, that it may have to do with storage of low-res versions of older photos on the camera roll for offline viewing, while the full-res versions are uploaded to iCloud. And it's these iCloud versions that are accessed by the Photos app both on the iPhone and on the iMac.


I appreciate your suggestion of the app. I'd check it out, but now it looks like it won't be necessary. Thanks for speaking up!


Howard

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User profile for user: Zack.d
Zack.d
User level: Level 1
72 points

Jun 12, 2017 12:17 AM in response to hlritter

The reason why it is not transferring photos might be because the other device is not compatible. This happens when using airdrop. There is an easy way to transfer photos to anywhere. There is an app called wifi photo transfer. It will easily send photos to your other devices. It is nice and easy to use.


Hope this helps!

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Unable to share photos from iPhone

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