You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Saving Documents to MacBook

I am not able to save a Word document to an old folder - when I use "save as" in Word, it refuses to save to one of my old folders saying the disk may be full or write-protected.

What happened?

I have created, imported and saved 100s of documents in the past.


MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on Jul 4, 2019 6:28 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 4, 2019 6:30 PM

RBoydOb wrote:

It worked well for about 10 months, then I changed the user name and now I cannot save to the old folders.

Sound like a permissions issue. Did you change the long name or the short name? If you changed the short name, exactly how did you do it as this is difficult to do properly and safely?


If you mean you created a whole new user then you won't be able to access the older items until the permissions have been changed to allow the new user to access them.


Where are the files & folders located which can not be written by you? If they are located on the root of the drive or another restricted area or within another user folder, then you won't be able to write to them.


10 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 4, 2019 6:30 PM in response to RBoydOb

RBoydOb wrote:

It worked well for about 10 months, then I changed the user name and now I cannot save to the old folders.

Sound like a permissions issue. Did you change the long name or the short name? If you changed the short name, exactly how did you do it as this is difficult to do properly and safely?


If you mean you created a whole new user then you won't be able to access the older items until the permissions have been changed to allow the new user to access them.


Where are the files & folders located which can not be written by you? If they are located on the root of the drive or another restricted area or within another user folder, then you won't be able to write to them.


Jul 5, 2019 4:23 AM in response to HWTech

There were two users - when I first got this MacBook I started using it under a user name, then wanted to “copy” the data from my old MacBook to this one.

That creates two users. My name, typed two different ways.

I then worked with someone at the Apple store and they “merged” the two user accounts.

I can see all the files and open all the files.

I just cannot add a new file to one of the old folders using “save as”.

A few weeks ago I spent about an hour moving new files into old folders using a multi-step process where I gave each file permission to be put there (I do not recall how I started doing that, I was on a plane and just playing around).

is this something that someone at the Apple store could help with?

i could make an appointment, but don’t want to, if they can’t fix it.

Thank you for your responses so far.

Jul 5, 2019 9:17 AM in response to HWTech

That is working - but now a new question:

under the Sharing and Permissions tab it shows the names as

Fetching...

staff

everyone


when I open it the Fetching... privilege is Read &Write, but the other two are read only.

I am changing those one by one on my folders.

Question:

what is Fetching...?

is it ok to have the staff (?) and everyone with read & write?

thank you


Jul 5, 2019 9:33 AM in response to RBoydOb

I'm not at a Mac at the moment. The best way to make sure you are setting the permissions correctly is to look at a folder which belongs to this user account. Create a new folder and check its permissions. Then set the permissions on the troublesome folders/files accordingly. Usually the only users given read & write permissions are the owner of the account since you don't want other users to be able to modify your files.


If you look closely at the photos in the article, you will see both "staff" and "everybody" are shown with read only access.


I've never heard of Fetching. Perhaps it has something to do with merging the two accounts?

Jul 5, 2019 10:51 AM in response to HWTech

Maybe Fetching was part of the merge process.

If I leave Staff and Everyone in ‘read only’, then I cannot drop a new document into that folder. It will only let me ‘save’ to an “old” folder if I let “Staff” have ‘read and write’ privileges.

That seems to be working, but it is still a little unsettling.

Jul 6, 2019 6:59 AM in response to HWTech

Thank you - I also texted with my son about the name Fetching, he thought maybe there was an error when my system updated to the new operating system.

I went into the utilities app, terminal, and changed the Permissions under my name, and now all the folders appear to be available to me. But still testing.

Thank you for your help.

Rebecca

Saving Documents to MacBook

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.