iPhoto doesn't work anymore after trying to add (many) photos

Question

My friend has a Macbook and was adding a lot of photos (I.e. many many). In the process of adding the photos, iPhoto "stopped working" and now whenever she tries to open iPhoto it just thinks and thinks and then eventually silently fails (does not open at all)

Does anyone know how to fix this? Ideally without losing any photos? The ones that "caused" this failure are replaceable, but the others (the ones that were already there) are not backed up anywhere and are very precious.

Sorry for the nebulous description, but I wasn't there when it happened and my friend isn't terribly good at describing these sorts of things... can anyone help? It would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

The library may have become corrupt, I'd try Rebuilding the iPhoto library.

• Quit iPhoto if it is open.
• Hold down the Command and Option keys on the keyboard.
• Open iPhoto.
• Keep the keys held down until you are prompted to rebuild the library.
• A dialog will appear with rebuild options. Select the options you want to use.
• Click Rebuild to begin the rebuild process. This may take a few minutes to complete.