operation can't be completed because an item of same name already exist

Turns out it has to do something with the names of certain files. I solved it by changing some file names in which there was a "~". When I replaced the "~" with a "-", it was possible to copy the folder.

Problem solved! Thanks! 😀

I had the same problem on a Mac HFS+ formatted disk (that had previously been formatted FAT32). I went to Disk Utility and repaired the disk. Problem solved. It now works as expected.

Seeing the exact same problem copying a huge directory to my ReadyNas.

The source director is from an HFS+ and has never had Windows near it so all should be Mac acceptible file names. The destination is the directory structure on the ReadyNas Pro file system which I think is a Linux ext4 fs. Sometimes the copy works, then I see random failures with the same "file exists" message.

I note that prior to this problem occuring, my network is grinding to a terrible 10kbps transfer rate and m source disk I/O is humungous. Killing finder and restarting fixes the problem until after a while it may randomly crap out with the same problem.

I have installed ForkLift 2 and this works perfectly. Brilliant tool.

I know it's an old thread but has anyone found a solution to this

"A newer item named “filename” already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the older one you’re moving?"

?

I was receiving the message "The operation cannot be completed because an item with the name [ ] already exists"

My solution has been to search the source folders for any filenames with odd characters, especially ~ I then rename those files to remove the odd character and I'm able to copy the folders without getting the error.

Doesn't help in my case because it is not possible to create any files. There seems to be different problems, some with working solutions, in this thread.

This one is related to the problem of creating new files to SMB-shares regardless of filename or extented attributes.

The file is created with read-only attributes (-r--r--r--) and then comes the question "A newer item named “filename” already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the older one you’re moving?" with pop up for admin password to confirm changes and finally a message "The operation can’t be completed because an item with the name “” already exists."

If trying to move/copy files from the terminal the message is simply 'Permission Denied' even the target directory has full access (drwxrwxrwx). The same if trying to create a file (eg. using vi).

Deleting, modifying existing file or moving inside the SMB-share works fine. Every other OS works fine and 3rd party file managers inside Mac work fine but makes life quite hard because applications (eg. iTunes) cannot create files to SMB.

So the folks that have the similar problem, have you found a working solution or created a bug-report?

Hi,

I have Lion and use a QNAP NAS also ext4, I was getting the "file exists" error message for months while copying files from the QNAP back to my Mac. I found the cause was upper/lowercase filenames. Somehow I had a file "file.txt" and also "FILE.txt" in the same folder on the NAS which is legal on a ext4 file system because it is case sensitive and they are considered different files. When I tried to copy to the Mac I got the error, because the Mac was ignoring the case and getting confused,

The problem was compunded by the fact that the finder only showed one file. When i changed its name the second file suddenly appeared.

So if you are having problems, please try changing the file name, and see what happens, this is only valid if copying from NAS to Mac.

Hope that helps, somebody, 🙂