Documents and Desktop folders not working

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furrywolf Author

Level 1

4 points

Documents and Desktop folders not working

On a Early 2011 MacbookPro running High Sierra.

I was trying to migrate data from an older hard drive to my user folder using Carbon Copy Cloner.

Now shift-cmd-o and shift-cmd-d do not work. I get

And in finder preferences, the desktop and document folders are icon-only:

These folders don't have their corresponding icons, just folder icons.

My iCloud Desktop and Document folders are named correctly (also have standard folder icons), but the corresponding folders in my user folder are called "desktop - computername" and "Documents - computername" I read elsewhere that this was because of turning off iCloud drive, which I did to recover missing files. The iCloud drive is located in the favorites area instead of the separate iCloud area (under favorites and above devices in the sidebar).

I figure this is a minor issue to rectify. So, what do I need to do i need to do to clean this up?

TIA.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Jun 27, 2020 1:19 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

BDAqua

Level 10

239,369 points

Jun 27, 2020 2:46 PM in response to furrywolf

Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode?

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

If that doesn't do it clone again or Reinstall theOS...

1. Start up from macOS Recovery

To start up from macOS Recovery, turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold one of the following combinations on your keyboard. Command-R is generally recommended, especially if you never installed macOS Sierra 10.12.4 or later… https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904#notupdated

Command (⌘)-R

Install the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac.

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Answer 2

furrywolf Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 27, 2020 6:24 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for the quick response. Safe mode didn’t help.

I failed to mention that my user folder is on another drive (I have 2 SSDs in my machine.

Given that an OS reinstall would not touch the user folder in question, I verified that I had a full TM and iCloud backup and then I deleted the user using a different admin account, deleted the bad user folder entirely, recreated the user and cloned the user folder back to the second drive - making sure that the user number is correct.

I have all of my icons and keyboard shortcuts back and I am restoring from my iCloud Drive. Restoring mail will be a bit of a task given how many email accounts I have.

do I need to reset my UUID if it does not match the previous one, or am I OK there?

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Answer 3

furrywolf Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 16, 2020 6:14 PM in response to BDAqua

I was concerned that the user ID might cause issues if there was a mismatch.

In the end, I had to kill the user, restore from Time Machine, and then turn on off and then on iCloud Drive. When I ended up with "Documents - computername" and "Documents - computername," I stopped iCloud sync and moved all of the "computername" back into place from the terminal mv and cp commands - I had to do both because I didn't want to miss anything. I turned iCloud Drive back on, then I double - and triple (quadruple?)-checked that the Time Machine files matched the iCloud drive content and then waited for iCloud to sync-up.

I still ended up re-authorizing some apps (not sure why) and probably waaaaay over checked content.

Everything seems to be OK except for the occasional need to re-open files (Quicken didn't know where my data was, and Carbon Copy Cloner needs it's copying events re-activated (it always does) because it always forgets drive UUIDs when OSs et updated - that's a pain in the behind, but I live with it.

All of this had to be done because a Restore Volume TM restore would not affect the second drive where all of the user files in question live. The users that are stored on the startup drive worked fine after a TM restore.

All seems well now, and I really appreciate the assist - you got my brain thinking in the right direction.

Thanks!

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