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Q: Anyone having difficulty in opening apps or files - in 10.12
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Sep 21, 2016 11:52 AMby chris_g1,
Hello ribbo39,
​Thanks for seeking help with your iMac and difficulty opening apps or files since your upgrade of macOS Sierra. I understand how important it is to have your computer for everything thee days, and we hate to hear of problems for anyone right after an update or upgrade. I want to recommend a few things to try to repair this, or at least isolate the issue so we know what area to check to resolve this.
The first thing we want to ensure is that all your data is safe. You can make a backup using Time Machine and an external hard drive. Some people recommend an external hard drive two times the size of your internal hard drive because it will fill up with backups eventually, but as long as you have a drive large enough to store all the data currently on your Mac, that will suffice. Use this article for help making a backup for your Mac: Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac.
Once you have a backup, the next step is to test to see if the issue is also happening in safe mode. Safe mode will tell us if the issue is related to a startup item or plugins. To check safe mode, please open this help article: Try safe mode if your Mac doesn't finish starting up. If you are able to double click apps and get them to open as you expect them to, restart your Mac to leave safe mode. If the issue is still not working when you boot normally back into your main user, please check the section titled "If an issue doesn't happen in safe mode" for the proper troubleshooting steps.
If the issue is also happening in safe mode, you want to test this in another test administrator user account on your Mac. A test user will let us know if the issue is isolated to your account, or system wide. Please check this help article: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac. Please test if you are able to click and open files. If the issue is not being experienced in the test user, check the section titled "If an issue happens in only one user account" from the article provided in the previous sentence of this paragraph. It has a few things to check, but then leads to this help article: Mac OS X: How to troubleshoot a software issue for further troubleshooting.
Thank you again and have a great rest of your day.
