If the data on your SD card is formatted for Windows using NTFS, trying to open it on an Apple device won’t work.
Plug the SD card into your Windows machine, copy off the files to your local computer. Then, reformat the SD card using FAT32, and recopy the files back to the SD card. It should be readable by the Mac now.
What format is it now?
1. Copy the contents of the SD card back to the PC.
2. Format the SD card to Fat32.
3. Copy the contents from the PC back to the SD card.
4. Insert SD card into MacBook Air.
5. Copy the contents from the SD card to the MacBook Air.
Why not just email to yourself?
If the files were created in a program you still have then you probably have to export them rather than just copying them
Upload your data onto cloud google drive. Download it onto macbook.
Do not reformat. That essentially wipes the drive.
Formatting media wipes all the data off of it. Therefore, before you format (and thus erase) the SD, make sure you still have the original files on the windows machine. You might have accidentally "moved" them to the SD card instead of "copying" them to it.
Once formatted FAT-32 virtually any machine should be able to read it - windows, linux, mac...
Even Linux can read NTFS now.
What if you got a second SD card, formatted that one to work in the MAC, and then transferred the contents of the original card onto the new card? Would that work?
The Windows/MAC thing is a big source of frustration sometimes .. I have two windows machines and two MACS. A desktop of each and a laptop of each. Sometimes it’s like moving furniture from room to room....
If the files are too large to email, you could save them to a cloud based storage service like Google Drive or Dropbox (both free) and simply share the files with your friend, who can then download them.
Use a (free) Google Drive as an intermediary between the 2 machines. 15GB free storage.
Buy another SD card format it on mac.
Then copy first SD to PC, to then from PC to new SD.
Don’t upload pics to cloud unless you want them public forever.
Thanks, all, for your helpful responses and advice. Will read through and consider all. Smartphone internet access makes it somewhat difficult.
I wouldn’t try it. It’s one of those “matter, anti-matter” things. It never goes well when you bring them together.
Dropbox
Macs should be able to read the card if it’s in NTFS. They just can’t write to it natively.
However, if you are having issues, like most people said try copying the data back to your PC, reformat the card using exFAT. (NOT FAT or FAT32. They’re less efficient and have several file size limitations.) Also, your Mac has a sdcard slot?
If that still doesn’t work, try transferring the files using a regular USB drive.
You can get software to allow your mac to read NTFS from a company called Paragon. It is $20, but you can run it free for 10 days as a demo. Install it, copy your stuff. then you can remove it. It works.
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/index.html