http://twitter.com/#!/janshim/status/131182366726168577
If you habitually import images to your iPad 2 via Camera Connection Kit and for some reason find stray folders like the ones you see below, I’m delighted to share with you a method to get rid of them. It does not require iTunes or iPhoto as some Forum discussion groups will have you believe. I cannot say for certain when this phenomenon started nor can I say if this is caused by iOS 5.I’ve had over 4,500 images imported since day one back when it came with iOS 4.3.2 and didn’t think about removing the images until recently after I had already updated to iOS 5.
After exhausting all obvious methods of removal including iTunes and iPhoto on Mac, staff at the Kuala Belait branch of AV Electronics “Added” an image into one of the empty folders proceeding to “Delete” the same image afterwards, lo and behold, the photo gets deleted and removed the folder too. *Light bulb moment* Staff fired iPad 2’s camera several times to get some test images to delete. Repeated the procedure and it worked. I had over a dozen of stray Event folders that I manually removed this way. At this point, I do not know the cause of this rather uncharacteristic behaviour but given time I think I should be able to figure it out. Perhaps if this is an iOS 5 bug, future release should take care of this.
SHIMWORLD 
Thanks for the help in getting rid of all those pesky empty event folders remaining after camera imports!
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Thanks so much for this!
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This didn’t work for me, on an iPad 2. I have the exact same problem, after importing from a Camera Connection Kit, deleted the photo but the folder stayed behind. The folder I have is the date of the photo event, not an oddly named xxxIMPRT folder in this example. I have followed the instructions, but it did not remove the folder.
I am not able to find any more info on this either….
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I have an iPad 2 on IOS 5 with 119 empty Event folders and couldn’t get the “Add Photo” to come up either. My mistake for using the camera connection kit to my iPad 2 to back up and view photos on our overseas trip!
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These steps worked for me when the usual way of removing them via iTunes failed. I assume you’ve tried the normal method of photo removal via an iTunes sync and failed?
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It did not work for me either, I don’t know what to do anymore. Rose
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I have the same problem with Carl. After importing from CCK, I deleted my photos directly on the iPad 2, but the empty events were still there. Even iOS 5.1 didn’t fix this bug. My empty events show the date of that event instead of xxxIMPRT.
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This worked great for me! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself. Thanks for the help!
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Same here. I have thirty-six empty and undeletable “last import” folders, which appeared after I updated to iOS 5.1. After reading this post I looked in “events” and found six empty events. All but one I managed to delete using this method. The last one only allowed me to remove the photos from the folder, not delete them from the iPad – and the event folder remained (as did the thirty-six “last import” albums, to which I can’t add any images, from the iPad at least).
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No, doesn’t work for me 😦
On iPad 2 – ios 5.1 and I cannot delete the added photo as the delete btn does not light up.
So now I got the stuck imprt event with the photo inside.
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Don’t know if this will solve your problem, but I noticed that I couldn’t delete a photo that was in an album being synched from iTunes. If you were doing the same, try again with a photo that isn’t being synched. Might work?
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After upgrading to iOS 5.1 I think I now have problems of my own I cannot fix. My EVENTS page look OK, I can still remove but like Tsuken, I now have empty “Last Import” folders in the Albums page that you can do nothing to remove.
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What a simple solution! Thank you!
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Check this link with a possible solution after upgrading to ios 5.1. It worked for me. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3808013
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Not having seen this workaround on the discussion thread, I discovered the same ‘solution’ last week when I imported some images via the CCK but terminated it half way. I had two IMPT folders that were empty and impossible to remove on their own. Following my ‘unsuccessful’ import, I discovered that one of the two empty folders now contained photos from which I was able to select and delete the images along with the folder (using the very method from this post). So now I’m down to one empty folder which I have no bothered to remove.
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It worked for me. I had 118 empty folders. A bit boring to remove them one at a time, but it worked on my new (3rd gen) iPad
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Worked! here’s hoping for an Apple FIX soon!
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I ran into this same issue on my new iPad(3rd gen) after upgrading from iPad 2, I had a few hundred empty events(it took at least 30s of scrolling as fast as I could to reach the bottom). I use the camera connection kit as well as the EyeFI app to import photos constantly so it was a bit of a mess. I’m doing a road trip to SF area soon and needed space for new photos so I need to figure something out. After a bunch of digging around on the internet and looking into tools from my earlier jailbreaking days, I found a solution to do a full reset on the Photos.app. This does NOT require a jailbreak!
First I imported all photos to my mac using Image Capture. Then I turned off iCloud’s PhotoStream, turned off photo syncing in iTunes and let a the iPad do a full sync and backup. Next I ran DiskAid and deleted the photo related folders under the File System -> Media area(see below). This removed EVERYTHING from the Photos.app. Then I rebooted the iPad. The Photos.app was empty just like on a new device! I snapped a couple pics with the camera and it created the camera roll, I turned PhotoStream back on, synced some photos from iTunes. Everything seems to be working great now, just like new!
BEWARE: THIS WILL DELETE ALL PHOTOS STORED ON YOUR DEVICE in Photos.app!!! MAKE A BACKUP!!!!
Connect iOS device with USB and fire up DiskAid. In DiskAid click File System, then click Media. READ WARNING and accept.
Delete these folders:
PhotoData (this has all the photos, database, etc synced from iTunes)
DCIM (this is the camera roll)
Photos (I think this is just the data to determine which iTunes library its synced with)
PhotoStreamsData (iCloud Photo Stream data)
Reboot iPad(probably not required but doesn’t hurt)
Enjoy a fully reset Photos.app!
DiskAid: I used v5.12 on my Mac Mini(10.7.3)
http://www.digidna.net/products/diskaid
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This worked a treat!
Thanks for the tip!!
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@Steve
Your trick works! Thank you, thank you!
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Thanks Jan for posting a great solution to empty import folders
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Thank you so much. Worked for me. But this is a bad Apple design fault. Fix it Cupertino people !
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thanks thanks thanks!
I’m looking around for month get rid of these annoying events folders – nothing worked.
You tip does! You only need one photo to put in every folder you want to get deleted – delete this photo and every folder is gone.
iPad 2 with iOS 5.1.1
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Thanks for the tip…
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Thank you! that had been annoying me for weeks, i even factory reset the iPad and they were still there, went to an apple genius bar and everything. Thank you! your method works perfectly.
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I had success with this as well. A slight time-saving variation is to do the following: Copy a photo, then paste it into each of the empty folders. When the photo is pasted into all of the folders, delete it from one of them and it will be deleted “everywhere”, taking all the formerly empty folders with it. Of course I thought of trying this with only a few folders left. . . . Hopefully it will save you time. Thanks for the post.
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Brilliant idea. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
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wow, thanks, that was great..I just went to the apple store to ask several people, and none of them knew how to do that..I completed emptying over a dozen events that were empty….I just read the post from MD about copy and pasting then deleting the folders…damn, now I wish I had more to try that on…thanks for the help
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This will remove the photo you copy into the empty files so use a photo you do not want to keep!
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Thank you! This was a big help to me in clearing those xxxIMPRT folders from my “new” iPad. I used the method of copying one single photo to all those errant event folders. Deleted once and all the folders were gone. Hurray!
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Thanks so much, glad I found this trick before I had too many empty folders, now I can stay on top of it.
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Thanks for figuring this out. The trick works for me. Now I have to sit down for several hours to delete over 150 empty folders. An other bad design in Appel’s photo file system.
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Hello! This post couldn’t be written any better! Reading through this post reminds me of my old room mate! He always kept talking about this. I will forward this write-up to him. Fairly certain he will have a good read. Many thanks for sharing!
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Thank you! This worked for me.
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welll , I tried the copying the photo into the empty folder and yes it deleted the picture and I thought the folder went too but what it did was shift things around and made a second copy of the empty folder ….. I have the first generation Ipad with the 5.1.1 system …. any other solutions???
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Hi
No luck. My folder is in Albums. I place a picture in the folder but cannot see any instruction to “delete” I do see “remove” which does that to the photo but leaves the folder intact.
PLEASE HOW DO I GET THE DELETE COMMAND TO SHOW this is driving me crazy. My ipad is ser 3 up to date and working 100%
Thomas armour
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This worked for an iPad1 on iOS 5.1.1 where I had 9 empty xxxIMPRT folders left behind from importing photos..
I used the screen capture (Home button and power pressed together) to create a “scrap” picture to delete and copied the same picture into each IMPRT folder as described here (adding this to each folder) then I deleted the photo in one of the folders and because it deletes the photo everywhere – then this deleted all 9 xxxIMPRT folders..
Result!
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