Mac OS X Catalina File Sharing Issue

I was able to replicated this issue, and solve it with the following steps:

Computer 1 (file sharer): Disable and re-enable File Sharing under Settings > Sharing. No reboot is required

Computer 2 (file consumer): Either reboot, or force quit/relaunch Finder, then browse to your normally shared directories.

That was helpful for me and I marked it as such. Thank you. Slight caveat to my setup is that a reboot was required to get this to work correctly. Perhaps that could have been resolved with a Finder relaunch; I rebooted, though.

What you have attached is your Macs TCP/IP settings.

If you look there you can see that you are using DHCP to get an IP address from your wifi router.

What you need to then do is log into your router and set the DHCP reservation for your devices to make sure that they use the same IPs every time they log in.

Here is the basic instruction of how to do this.

1. Head to your router's configuration tool by typing in your router's IP address in your browser's navigation bar. Usually this is something like 192.168.0.1. You can check it by running ipconfig in a Command Prompt, or heading to System Preferences > Network on a Mac.
2. Find the DHCP reservation setting. This could also be called "DHCP Static Lease" or something similar. On my router, it was under the "Gateway" category.
3. Head to the computer for which you want to reserve an IP address and find its MAC address. Once again, you can find this by typing ipconfig into a Windows Command Prompt, or by going to System Preferences > Network on a Mac, clicking on your Wi-Fi card or Ethernet port, hitting Advanced, and going to the Ethernet tab. Your MAC address will be in the form 00:00:00:00:00:00. Note that a Wi-Fi card and Ethernet port will have two different MAC addresses, and you can't assign them both to the same IP, so pick the one you use primarily.
4. Type that computer's MAC address into the first entry in the DHCP Reservation setting. Then, type in the IP address that you want to reserve for that machine. Hit Apply, or whatever button is available to you.
5. Repeat with any other computers that you want to reserve

Once reserved go to this page in your Plex settings and reserve those IPs

Save and Reboot the server and Mac and you should be good to go.

Give that a try

I am also having this issue, albeit my particulars are a bit different. One of my computers is a brand new MacBook Pro loaded to the hilt that has been upgraded to Catalina and is the location of the shares; the other is Mac Pro that can't currently be upgraded to Catalina. The Mac Pro can connect to the share at the parent level on the MacBook Pro, but it cannot view or access any child directories or files.

I also have an iMac that I upgraded to Catalina last night. I use that iMac to do extensive design work, and I rely heavily on shares to be working correctly because my MacBook Pro is the location of the design files. I haven't tested this Catalina-to-Catalina connection yet, but I sure as heck am hoping that it works because if it doesn't I will be in a world of hurt and my design business will come to a screeching halt.

This fixed my issue where I had a shared NTFS drive mounted to an iMac Running Catalina (Using paragon NTFS for Mac) and I couldn't access it at all using a MacBook Pro running Catalina as well.

Thanks for the tip!

Somewhat similar going on here. I can access and do whatever going from my iMac (desktop) to my MacBook. However, from my MacBook to my iMac.... I can connect but then, I just get a folder icon. No files. What's odd though is that I can share screen and do whatever I want from my MacBook to my iMac.... just far slower.

Along with that... my file transfer time even from iMac to external drive has at least doubled.

Similar problem here. Both iMac and MBP upgraded to Catalina. I can access some files remotely, but not external drives or the Desktop folder (in either direction). I got several prompts asking about allowing applications access to these folders, but I can't find a way to allow this access to remote connections. When I try it, I can see the folder on the remote computer but when I click on them, Finder quits(!) with an error message saying "The operation can't be completed because the original item for "Desktop [or folder on external drive]" can't be found."

Switching sharing off/on did not resolve the issue.

I found an odd workaround. If I use Finder to navigate to a network computer and click on a shared drive, I get an error message and the Finder window closes. But, if I use the "Connect to server" dialog and type in the SMB URL for the shared computer, everything works as it should. This tells me that either Finder is not using SMB, or it is not authenticating properly when it does. Both computers only have SMB sharing enabled (AFP turned off).

This may be helpful for someone who has been unable to connect to a network drive using SMB. I found a very simple solution.

I have a local network that includes a Mac mini server with an attached USB drive, and after upgrading to MacOS Catalina I was unable to mount the drive from any computer on the network.

I found many posts on various forums that reported the problem but none of the suggested "solutions" solved the problem for me. (And on one forum I was even chastised for reporting the ineffectiveness of two suggested solutions.)

Here's how I solved the problem:

On the Mac mini server I displayed the Info window for the attached USB drive and selected "Shared folder".

Now I'm able to access the drive from my other computers in the network.

I have same problem with Documents folder on my Mac since upgrading to Catalina. I can see it but can't get into its contents from my MacBook Air. I can get into other folders like Music and Pictures. I have tried all the suggestions I have found on the internet without success. In the end I created a 'Documents (new)' folder on my Mac and transferred the contents from the original into it. I can now read and update them remotely. I can't get rid of the original folder which sits empty. Very annoying.

Also I can no longer read an external drive attached to my Mac from my MacBook Air. Not a disaster but very irritating.

So you don’t need to create a new folder. Just need to go to ‘Settings’ ‘sharing’ and un tick file sharing. Then tick it again. I also cleaned up any shared folders and external hdd from in here too.

hope this helps.

Thanks but I had tried the unticking/ticking routine without success. However, when I logged in today everything started working normally for no apparent reason, including remote access to the external drive.

@MonsieurLeB - Did you restart finder (hold option + right click finder icon in dock > relaunch) as it's said above, you need to relaunch finder for the fix to take effect. Rebooting or you logging out/in might have done this and made it work.

I relaunched finder a few times yesterday which solved access to my airport time capsule but not the other issues. I also rebooted my computers several times. As you say logging out, leaving it overnight and logging in today seems to have done the trick.

I had the same problem but with access to external drive content. Even with the File Sharing permissions already set for the external drive, my remote devices could not access its content. The fix provided by Pete Malkemes worked for me, as well. Disabled and re-enabled File Sharing, and the content appeared on my next remote access attempt. No need to recreate permissions, and no reboot or restart necessary.