Many of my photos in Aperture have the yellow warning badge that the referenced image is listed as “not found.” When I go to the external hard drive, the master is there. When I go to “locate referenced file”, it won’t reconnect. On the top, it only lists the Mac hard drive and not the external drive and on the bottom, the reconnect button remains shaded.
Here is how it began. I dragged all photos in “Pictures” and the Aperture library to 2 external drives and then deleted most of the photos and the Aperture library on the internal hard drive. There is also a separate vault on each external drive from previous backups. I then dragged Aperture back to the Mac internal drive. I know the masters are on the external drive because I can open them out of Aperture.
Also, what is the term “Rack photo” that I see in Pictures folders? Thanks?
Joe,
Hopefully this is an easy fix. I believe what’s happened is that in moving your files manually like that, Aperture lost track and the reason the Reconnect button is dim even when you’re pointing to the right files is that the file size has changed slightly (this has to do with byte size in moving from a smaller to a larger hard drive). Anyway if you are pointing to the same file at the top and the bottom of the Referenced Files manager, and the Reconnect button is still dim, then try pressing the option key to see if that makes it light up. That’s a “force” reconnect option—it’s not 100% successful, but let’s see how that works first.
Also I have a chapter on this with a lot more detail in the eBook “15 Tips on File Management in Aperture 3” titled “Tip #13 – Reconnecting Missing Files”.
@PhotoJoseph
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