Updated to 10.13, iPhoto library won't load

The library was transferred by Migration Assistant from a cloned disk. Is that not good - should I move it separately?

Migration Assistant is not as good as the Setup Assistant, when libraries are transferred. The difference is the following:

• The setup assistant is called, when you first set up a new Mac, before any user accounts are created. This ensures, that all permissions and file ownership will be set like for the original owner.
• The Migration Assistant will be called, after you created a new user account.. This account will belong to a different user than the one you are trying to migrate with the Migration assistant. and then you will run into permission issues.

I am alway migrating my libraries to a new Mac using the setup assistant, as soon as I first started up the new Mac and installed the system - before the Mac will create a new user account.

Is the iPhoto library you are trying to open in your Pictures folder or on an external drive?

If the library is in your Pictures folder you can try to repair the permissions by repairing your home folder permissions as described here: Resolve issues caused by changing the permissions of items in your home folder - Apple Support

I was using iPhoto 8.1.2 on my 10.9.5 system with a pretty large library.

Is iPhoto 8.1.2 still installed on the older system? Try to repair and rebuild the library on the older system in iPhoto 8.1.2.

Try all repair/rebuild options in turn - first the repair of permissions, then the repair of the library, then the rebuild.

How did you transfer the library? Do it on an external drive with the ignore ownership option disabled. On High Sierra you must not use drives for a photo library, if the drive has been used for Time Machine backups. prepare the drive like described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Option 1

Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.

If that fails:

Option 2

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In early versions of Library Manager it's the File -> Rebuild command. In later versions it's under the Library menu.)

This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, albums and keywords, faces and places back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.

Regards

TD

Michael Levin wrote:

I don't want to move to Photos, but I guess what you're saying I should do is rebuild the original database on the older machine, before moving it to the new one? I can certainly try that.

You have no choice except to move to Photos as you are so far behind on your software - since you do not own any version of iPhoto '11 you can not use iPhoto with the new OSs - if you had iPhoto 9.6.1 you could us it until some future upgrade breaks it

And yes as I posted you need to use iPhoto and maybe iPhoto library manager on your old system to clean up the iPhoto library as described in the links I posted and then move it to the new system and migrate to Photos and learn how to use Photos with is a new and different program with different features and different workflows

LN

Do you still have the older Mac, if you do Clean up the library on it -- Notes on Migrating an iPhoto Library from iPhoto to Photos for Mac

LN