Importing images into Photos "Cannot Import Item"

Hi! Not sure if you have your answer yet, but I was having the same problem tonight, and was able to correct most of it, granted you are working with a lot more photos than I had, so the solution might be extremely tedious for you. I had copied 6900 photos from an old iPhoto library into a folder on my new computer's desktop, and wanted to import them into my new Photos library. I got the same error message (4000 would not import), tried to mess with the permissions, etc., and nothing worked. I started moving around my files a bit, and for some reason, I got most of them to import (I honestly have no idea why) using the following steps:

• I created a separate folder on my desktop entitled "unimported."

• I clicked "import" in Photos, and imported one group of pictures at a time, alphabetically (first I did all the A's, then the B's, etc...like I said, tedious....)

• When I got the error message, I grabbed all of the files mentioned in the error and put them into the new "unimported" folder. Since they weren't listed alphabetically, and to make it easier to see which files to move, I copied the list of files on the error message and pasted it into a spreadsheet where I could alphabetize the names. Again, tedious...

• After going through the entire alphabet of photos and separating the unimported ones, I again hit "import" in Photos and selected all of the files in my "unimported" folder. Miraculously, most of them imported.

• Any files that still came up in the error message, I placed into a new "Still Unimported" folder.

• Once again, I hit "import" in Photos, and selected all of the "Still Unimported" files. I got all of them to import except 14 out of the 6900, and these 14 files also won't open in Preview, so they are most likely corrupted. I also wasn't able to import about 10 video files, but they will open in quicktime.

Not sure if this will help, but it seemed that for some weird reason, moving the files to different folders helped me! There has got to be an easier way, but not sure what it is. Good luck!

I moved on to the next, and it only imported a handful from that folder, and didn't work with any of the other folders.

Are your folders nested? It may be a problem of the folder names or filename.

You can get the error message you are seeing, if the names are too long, or if they contain characters, that the Finder cannot handle. Try to rename the containing folders to folder names, that are short and contain only alphanumeric characters and no white space or ethnic characters like "Umlaute", and check the filenames, of the files that did not import, if the filenames are simple enough. Is your external drive formatted case-sensitive? Photos has problems importing from a case-sensitive drive, i.e. importing videos or Live Photos.

try using Image Capture (in your Applications folder)

LN

what format are the photos? Will they open in Preview? Have you tried the Photos file menu ==> import command?

LN

Test, if the files on your external drive are readable at all.

As a test - copy one of the photos, that cannot be imported directly from your external drive, onto your system drive, for example to the Desktop or your Pictures folder.

Can you import it to Photos, if you import from your System drive?

Image Capture can import directly into Photos or you can import to disk and then use the Photos import capability to import into Photos

LN

In some cases, with older Macs, Apple Support recommended to downgrade to an older Sierra version, for example: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8186908?answerId=32691845022#32691845022

But if you downgrade the system to Photos 2.0, you will need to revert your Photos Library to an older version.