# Macintosh iPhoto Mystery **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 22, 2010, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macintosh-iphoto-mystery/547608 "2010-07-22T15:51:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Fried\_Dough\_Ho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a88e57/32.png) [@Fried\_Dough\_Ho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fried_Dough_Ho)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macintosh-iphoto-mystery/547608/1 "2010-07-22T15:51:56Z")
When one quickly scrolls up and down through the photos with the right-hand, grey button, a black rectangle cloud appears with the dates of the photos. However this morning, in scrolling through some old photos, my dates jump from July, 2010 to April, 2010. I seem to have lost May and June photographs. Anybody have any idea why or how that could have happened? ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macintosh-iphoto-mystery/547608/2 "2010-07-23T22:30:04Z")
How are you viewing your photos? By Library or Albums, or how else? Because you might be looking at an album that doesn’t have the May and June photos in them, but they would probably still be in the Library. If they aren’t in the Library, check the Trash (the Trash in iPhoto), maybe they accidentally were placed there. ---
**Author:** ![Fried\_Dough\_Ho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a88e57/32.png) [@Fried\_Dough\_Ho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fried_Dough_Ho)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2010, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macintosh-iphoto-mystery/547608/3 "2010-07-24T03:48:19Z")
> [@zbuzz](#): > > How are you viewing your photos? By Library or Albums, or how else? Because you might be looking at an album that doesn’t have the May and June photos in them, but they would probably still be in the Library. If they aren’t in the Library, check the Trash (the Trash in iPhoto), maybe they accidentally were placed there. I was viewing “Last 12 Months” which I assume to be the entire Library and no, they are not in the Trash. ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2010, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macintosh-iphoto-mystery/547608/4 "2010-07-25T03:19:17Z")
I’d check by “Photos” listed under “Library.” That’s a list of all the photos, regardless of date and whatnot, so if they aren’t there, they aren’t in iPhoto. But also check to make sure the number of photos listed in “Photos” is the same as the number in “Last 12 Months.” If “Last 12 Months” is less, it’s possible that the file dates on some photos have changed, so they aren’t listed under “Last 12 Months.” Another thing to try is to search for the photos on the whole computer. Find the file names of the last April photo and the first July photo. The May and June photos, if you’ve taken all photos with the same camera, will probably all be named sequentially. So, if the last May photo is named something like IMG\_0100 and the first July photo is named IMG\_130, those missing photos are named IMG\_101 to IMG\_129. Search the whole computer for a few of those file names in the gap. ---
**Author:** ![Fried\_Dough\_Ho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a88e57/32.png) [@Fried\_Dough\_Ho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fried_Dough_Ho)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macintosh-iphoto-mystery/547608/5 "2010-07-25T03:44:01Z")
> [@zbuzz](#): > > I’d check by “Photos” listed under “Library.” That’s a list of all the photos, regardless of date and whatnot, so if they aren’t there, they aren’t in iPhoto. But also check to make sure the number of photos listed in “Photos” is the same as the number in “Last 12 Months.” If “Last 12 Months” is less, it’s possible that the file dates on some photos have changed, so they aren’t listed under “Last 12 Months.” > > Another thing to try is to search for the photos on the whole computer. Find the file names of the last April photo and the first July photo. The May and June photos, if you’ve taken all photos with the same camera, will probably all be named sequentially. So, if the last May photo is named something like IMG\_0100 and the first July photo is named IMG\_130, those missing photos are named IMG\_101 to IMG\_129. Search the whole computer for a few of those file names in the gap. Yeah - the last photo I have from April is IMG\_3079 and the next one in July is IMG\_4916 - almost 2,000 photos are gone… ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2010, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macintosh-iphoto-mystery/547608/6 "2010-07-25T04:04:45Z")
It’s possible that your iPhoto database is corrupt. What version are you using? ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2010, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macintosh-iphoto-mystery/547608/7 "2010-07-25T04:26:35Z")
> [@Fried\_Dough\_Ho](#): > > almost 2,000 photos are gone… Ouch, I’ve been down that road before so I know how much that sucks. I thought maybe you had accidentally used the “Hide” photos function, but if Spotlight isn’t bringing up any hits on the file names, they aren’t on your computer at all. Since that seems to be the case, do you recall how you got the photos onto the Mac in the first place? If you check iPhoto preferences and click the “Advanced” tab, there is an option called “Copy items to the iPhoto Library.” If you transferred the missing photos over from a thumb drive or some other external drive and loaded them into iPhoto with that box unchecked, iPhoto will think those photos live on the other drive and not copy them over to your Mac. So when you had that drive connected you could see the photos, but now its not connected so you can’t. That’s a long shot if that happened, but it’s a possible explanation of what happened at least. Any chance you have Time Machine enabled? ---
**Author:** ![Fried\_Dough\_Ho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a88e57/32.png) [@Fried\_Dough\_Ho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fried_Dough_Ho)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2010, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/macintosh-iphoto-mystery/547608/8 "2010-07-25T18:25:12Z")
Yeah - I am screwed… Time Machine has not been working and has continued giving error messages. I thought it might be my external hard-drive, but I have two Macs and the Time Machine worked fine with that one (a MBP) while the MacAir apparently is buggy…