I recently moved most of my Aperture library to an external drive to save disc space on my iMac. No problems until I tried to switch to or download one of the files and now I get an “an error occurred” message. I was able to move the file to iphoto with no problems, just can't get it back into Aperture. Any ideas out there?
James,
I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you mean by “switch to or download”. Can you please provide exact steps of what you’re doing, and from what application? What menu you’re selecting, and what you’re trying to achieve, that sort of info.
Thanks
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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When I click on a library in the External, I get a message with a choice of “switch” to another library or “download” the selected library on the external into Aperture. I usually use “switch” because it’s much faster. I usually only keep one or two libraries in Aperture. This file simply produces an error message and I can’t go any farther. I was able to copy the file to a thumb drive and also load it into iPhoto. Thanks. Jim
I checked the file on the External. Sharing and Permissions are all the same. Anyone can read and I can read and write. I even changed the permissions to everyone can read and write. When I click download, I get the Aperture import merging thing, but nothing happens. So far, this is the only file I’m having this problem with. Thanks, JIM
Update. Well, I’m not sure what I did, but now the iPhoto “event” as well as a copy of the file I copied to a thumb drive is now in Aperture. Weird. I will just leave them in Aperture and assume there is something corrupted in the External Library which Aperture doesn’t like. Thanks, Jim
James,
Sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner.
The message you were seeing is because Aperture has the ability to manage as many Libraries as you like, and switch between them at will. When you’re already running Aperture, and you double-click on a Library in the Finder, Aperture asks if you want to Switch or Import. You said “download” before, and if that is in fact the dialog you’re seeing, then that’s new to me. But it should be “Import”.
Sounds like you had some kind of corruption on that one Library, but if you’ve managed to get them together now, then that’s all that matters! You probably should run a maintenance routine on your Library now, just to be safe. On launch, hold down Command-Option and you’ll get a dialog offering various repair options. Do the “Repair Permissions” first, then quit Aperture and do it again, this time choosing “Repair Database”. The “Rebuild” is only for dire situations.
Also, just to be sure you understand the functionality here, when you choose to “Switch” Libraries, you’re doing exactly that—switching entirely from one Library to another. But if you choose to “Import”, the second library is imported into the first one, so now you’ll have a duplicate copy of all your photos.This is designed so you can move pieces of a library around to different systems, or offload it to another editor, or whatever you need, then bring it back in.
Once you’ve successfully imported on Library into another, there’s no need to keep the old Library around. And it’s probably dangerous to do so, because if you make changes to one, it won’t be updated in the other, and you could end up with a versioning nightmare.
Hope that helps,
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Thanks so much Joseph. This really helps a lot. Jim