Photos drag and drop bug

Question

Level 1

14 points

Photos drag and drop bug

Hello,

I am trying to create a book in Photos and the drag and drop functionality breaks. It happens in the following workflow:

1. Open a book project in Photos and go to edit a page

2. Right-click on a page and select "Layout options..."

3. Select a layout option and close the "Layout options" window that pops up

4. You can no longer click on the page and select cells nor can you drag and drop photos into the photo book

The only way to "fix" this problem is to completely close and restart Photos. This is horrible and never used to work this way. This is my fourth book project I have created over the course of three years and I have never encountered this problem before. This is such a game-breaking workflow problem, I would consider switching to another product rather than continue using Photos.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013), macOS Sierra (10.12.6)

Posted on Nov 12, 2017 12:31 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 16, 2017 5:49 PM in response to Greentiger74

Hello Greentiger74,

I feel your pain. I have had this issue spanning several versions of Photos and still have this issue. I was part of a discussion in 2016 about this issue.

The link to the discussion is

iPhoto stops letting me add photos and edit page layout to picture book

The solution was to set up a test user account and do the work in the test user account.

Weird thing is that I have this issue again running High Sierra on a fresh install but with an old library of photos so maybe it is related to the library

Kevin

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Answer 2

Nov 18, 2017 6:42 AM in response to soccerdad0071

Hi Greentiger74,

I may have fluked onto a possible solution.

Do you have an Apple Magic Mouse? (though this may work for other devices).

I set up a new testuser account on my Mac and was able to add photos to pages in the book I created. Whilst working I realized that the test user account didn't have the secondary click (or smart zoom) activated in the mouse preferences in system preferences. As soon as I activated the secondary click and made a layout change, the problem returned even with my test user and the only way to continue was to restart photos. The problem returned as soon as I modified a layout again.

So far if I keep the secondary click deactivated I can work in photos without having a problem - of course you lose some functionality by not having the secondary click.

Try this and see how you get on

Kevin

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Answer 3

Greentiger74 Author

Level 1

14 points

Nov 18, 2017 6:42 AM in response to soccerdad0071

I am not using a Magic Mouse, just the MacBook track pad. Interestingly enough, your post did help me find a much more palatable workaround. Instead of using the secondary-click to open the page layout options, I am simply clicking on the "Options" button below each page. This will also open the layout options, select one and still use drag-and-drop.

So to chalk it up, the bug is in the secondary-click event in the Photos Photobook editor which appears to disable to primary-click event on the Photobook primary workspace. Outside of the primary workspace, primary-click appears to continue to work. :-/

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Answer 4

kwkiwi

Level 1

23 points

Nov 22, 2017 2:55 AM in response to Greentiger74

i have made over 20 Apple photobooks. One each for each year. This photobook problem happened six months ago and I was told by Apple that it would be sorted with the high sierra upgrade. It was not. Although that is interesting what you’re saying about using options at the bottom of the page or disabling the secondary mouse click.

However I’ve since moved to bob books and Saal photobooks after watching some Photobook guru YouTube videos. I can recommend either of those companies. They also have lie flat options and cheaper prices. You can even access the albums in Photos with the bob books desktop software. If you go to the bob books site bookshop you can view other people‘s published photobooks and get some great ideas.

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