Apple Photos not able to import photos - unknown error

[jclin10]

I've been trying to import photos into Photos and there are a bunch for which I get an "unknown error" when I try to import them. It's always the same photos, so I don't think it's an error like a bad cable. It happens whether I am trying to import directly from the SD card or from a separate hard drive onto which I've already transferred the photos successfully. Strangely, I can open the files using Preview, so I wonder if there is just some reason why I can't import them into Photos.

Does anyone have any ideas what is going on and whether there is any way for me to fix this? If necessary, I'd be happy to take the SD card to a data recovery person, but would like to first see if I can take care of it myself.

 

[Nick on the Baltic]

It sounds like the files are corrupted in some way - can you open them with another photo editing program?

You could try "save as" from Preview (or another program that works) and then open in Photos.

Are they jpeg, raw or what? You could try an image format converter.

 

[Greybeard2023]

I've been trying to import photos into Photos and there are a bunch for which I get an "unknown error" when I try to import them. It's always the same photos, so I don't think it's an error like a bad cable. It happens whether I am trying to import directly from the SD card or from a separate hard drive onto which I've already transferred the photos successfully. Strangely, I can open the files using Preview, so I wonder if there is just some reason why I can't import them into Photos.

Does anyone have any ideas what is going on and whether there is any way for me to fix this? If necessary, I'd be happy to take the SD card to a data recovery person, but would like to first see if I can take care of it myself.

How about if you copy the files to the internal disk and import from there?

What sort of files are they? Could you post a sample file?

 

[jclin10]

I tried that, but no luck. They are JPG files.

 

[jclin10]

They are JPG files. The odd thing is that I have been able to open them in Preview, but not in Photos. I’ve tried exporting from Preview and then importing to Photos, but no luck.

 

[Barry Twycross]

I've had that happen occasionally, quitting and restarting Photos usually make it behave.