Unable to Open Photos After High Sierra Upgrade

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Level 1

5 points

Unable to Open Photos After High Sierra Upgrade

Hi all,

I have a late-2013 27 inch iMac with a 3 TB Fusion drive. I was previously running the last version of El Capitan and upgraded to High Sierra today (10.13.1). Photos was working fine. When I try to open Photos now I get the following error:

"The library could not be opened. Photos has attempted to repair the library "Photos Library", but is unable to open it".

I then have the option to either "Open Other" or "Quit". Open Other does nothing for me because there is nothing else to open. So that just leaves Quit. Any thoughts? (I have googled this and, while others seem to have had a similar experience when upgrading to Sierra, I did not identify anything that could be deemed much of a solution) I have a recent Time Machine backup but have not mucked around with that in the hopes that maybe there is something else to be done. I also ran First Aid in Disk Utilities but did not identify any problems.

Any assistance is much appreciated.

Mario

Posted on Nov 12, 2017 1:11 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

194,733 points

Nov 12, 2017 2:37 AM in response to mvaldes

Check, if Photos can open any library at all. Launch Photos, while holding down the options key ⌥. Keep holding down this key, until you are seeing the library chooser panel and click the "Create New" button.

Can Photos work with this new library?

If even a new library does not work, reinstall High Sierra. You do not need to make a clean install - just install High Sierra again on top of the current system. Reinstall by booting into the Recovery partition, to ensure that the system will be reinstalled completely and not just the changes since El Capitan. How to reinstall is described here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314
If a new library does work post back. Something must have damaged the library, if it cannot even be repaired. How did you upgrade to High Sierra? Did you restore your user account from a backup? How much free storage do you have on the system drive?

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Answer 2

mvaldes Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 12, 2017 3:30 AM in response to léonie

OK. I think we have success! When I got the message that "Photos has attempted to repair the library "Photos Library", but is unable to open it" I thought that the repair process had been initiated automatically and had failed but apparently that was not correct. I even tried holding down Option and Command while double-clicking the Photos icon but that gave me the same error message. So I tried holding down both keys and using "Open" from the File menu in the Finder. while Photos was selected That brought up as separate repair dialog which I initiated. It took a long time - more than 2 hours - and hung for an inordinate long time at 67% but eventually it finished and resulted in opening the application with all photos seemingly intact. Even the comments when "Get Info" is selected. So I guess all is OK.

Thank you again Leonie.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

194,733 points

Nov 12, 2017 1:26 AM in response to mvaldes

"The library could not be opened. Photos has attempted to repair the library "Photos Library", but is unable to open it".

Where is your Photos Library stored, Mario? Is it in your Pictures folder, stored locally on your iMac, or is it on an external drive? If it is on an external drive, how is it connected? Is the file system macOS Extended (Journaled)?

Can Photos open your library, if you double click it directly in the the Finder instead of launching Photos?

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Answer 4

mvaldes Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 12, 2017 1:44 AM in response to léonie

Hi Leonie and thanks for taking the time to respond.

"Where is your Photos Library stored, Mario? Is it in your Pictures folder, stored locally on your iMac"

Yes. In "Pictures" stored locally on my iMac.

"Can Photos open your library, if you double click it directly in the the Finder instead of launching Photos?"

I have tried that as well. No luck.

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