After a downgrade back to Sierra, Photos won't open library. Help!!

Question

After a downgrade back to Sierra, Photos won't open library. Help!!

Hi guys, I had to downgrade from High Sierra back to Sierra, as after I restarted my iMac, the latest update automatically installed, then wouldn't boot (tried everything SMC, cmd-r disk utilities, P-RAM, even safe mode...wouldn't boot etc ). So after a clean install, everything is fine apart from Apple Photos can't open the library as it's from a later version. What can I do? I could go back to High Sierra, but I'm not sure that's a good idea due to it messing up last time:/

Thanks

Chris

iMac, macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Dec 18, 2017 2:38 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

194,761 points

Dec 18, 2017 5:16 AM in response to Christopher Hughes4

Yes. You can only use your Photos Library on a Mac with the same system version that it created it or a newer version.

On your current system you could only extract the original image files from the Photos Library package and start over with a new library. You would lose all edits and metadata you added.

It is not normal anyway, that your Mac could not start after the High Sierra upgrade.

If you want to upgrade again, I would not do the upgrade with the upgrader from the App Store, but boot into the Recovery Partition and reinstall the complete system from recovery. See: OS X: About OS X Recovery

Perhaps that will working better, if you reinstall the complete system and not just the changes between Sierra and High Sierra.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

194,761 points

Dec 18, 2017 2:47 AM in response to Christopher Hughes4

You need either to restore the Photos Library from theist backup you made, before you upgraded to High Sierra, or go back to High Sierra. The format of the library is different between Photos 2.0 on Sierra and Photos 3.0 on High Sierra, and it is not possible to downgrade the library, unless your Photos Library is in iCloud. If you have your photos in iCloud Photo Library, you can simply create a new, empty library and wait for your library to download from iCloud. This will downgrade it back to Photos 2.0.

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Answer 3

Dec 18, 2017 3:04 AM in response to léonie

Hi Lénoie, thanks for your speedy response.

Sadly, unknown to me, my Airport Extreme has not been working properly, so my ‘backup’ before clean install was over Firwire Target Mode to USB drive, then copied back on. So I’m guessing my only chance is to open it on a Mac running High Sierra, or upgrade again?

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