Catalina - Can't save files

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gupster75 Author

Level 1

16 points

Catalina - Can't save files

Recently I can't save changes I've made to PDFs. It says:

The document "whatever" could not be saved as "whatever2"

It can also not be duplicated.

macOS Catalina version 10.15.2

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018)

MacBook

Posted on Jan 3, 2020 4:13 AM

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Answer 1

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John Galt

Level 10

146,390 points

Jan 3, 2020 1:05 PM in response to gupster75

This Apple Support document may be relevant, especially if files are generally affected and not just PDFs: Resolve issues caused by changing the permissions of items in your home folder

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Answer 2

gupster75 Author

Level 1

16 points

Jan 3, 2020 10:33 AM in response to John Galt

Hi John. It started today (3 Jan 2020) with Pages not wanting to auto save or save manually, saying that the file cannot be saved as that (in the name it was saved in the first place). I then pasted something in Terminal that I read in a similar query, which looks like it solved the problem for Pages.

I've always been able to annotate on PDFs and save them as the original name or as a duplicate, but now there is a message which states that the file cannot be saved, a duplication needs to be made. It still won't save the file...

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Answer 3

John Galt

Level 10

146,390 points

Jan 3, 2020 8:43 AM in response to gupster75

A trivial explanation is the PDF document may be locked.

Is your inability to edit or duplicate files strictly limited to PDFs?

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Catalina - Can't save files

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