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.

Daler6 Author

Level 1

5 points

Item “filename alias” is used by macOS and can’t be opened.

I am re-opening this issue that I found on an earlier post, updating it to reflect my OS. The only previous response was not helpful.

Without any cause that I can see all of my alias links are now broken. When trying to open a file with the alias link I get the following, Item “{filename} alias” is used by macOS and can’t be opened. Finder icon has changed to a blank paper icon with no alias arrow. Permissions are set to read/write in the the get info window. Kind says: "alias data" instead of "Alias". All the broken alias files show a modified date of July 16, 2019 at 10:08 am. I can make new alias files that work but would like to fix instead of recreate all of them. Any thoughts why this happened, and how I can fix. Running Catalina 10.15.2

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Jan 17, 2020 1:50 PM

Top-ranking reply

Kappy

Level 10

361,849 points

Posted on Jan 17, 2020 8:48 PM

Select the alias file, CTRL- or RIGHT-click to open the Get Info window. In the General panel you will see the following section:

Click on the Select New Original button from which you can re-direct the alias to the file it should be connected to.

View in context

Item “filename alias” is used by macOS and can’t be opened.

Similar questions