Viewing JPG Files

I am unable to view my pictures on my Macbook Pro saved on an external that were put there using windows software. I keep getting this message: "It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn’t recognize."

What happens if you copy a few to your local drive? Same thing? If not, seems like the format of the external drive may be causing some problem. The solution might be to copy them to your HDD, format the external in a Mac compatible and copy them back.

The drive is probably formatted as NTFS (commonly used in the Windows world) but that shouldn't stop the Mac from reading the files assuming the files were written properly.

Copying a few of the files to the Mac drive is worth a try but I suspect won't help much if any. If it doesn't put the external drive back on that Windows machine and attempt to read the files. Also wouldn't hurt to have Windows test that external drive and make sure the file structure is intact.

I've tried both ways; copying a couple to the hard drive and trying to open, but I get the same message. I'll try plugging my external back on a windows computer and see was happens. Thank you

If you discover that the files cannot be opened on Windows, that would suggest one of three possible causes:

1. The files were saved in some non-standard version of jpg.
2. The files were corrupted during save and did not save properly
3. The drive is having issues.

When you connect the drive to Windows try saving something with a different filetype (Word document, text file, etc) If that does not save/open correctly that would suggest drive issues.

I was able to view my pictures when I had my Dell, but since I switch over to a Macbook Pro, they just stop showing.

I had the same problem. My Mac-book Pro would not load photos from a windows external drive. I ended up transferring them with a SanDisk flash drive.