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DutchDude357 Author

Level 1

16 points

HELP! Can't open the Documents folder in Finder, Folder shows empty but still holds 16Gb.

My folder is still there, but when I open it in Finder there's nothing there. If I go to the Home directory it says it contains the 16Gb of data that was in there, If I right click on the folder and select get info it says the 16 Gb of data is still in there. However if I select the folder from the sidebar it is empty, right clicking on the sidebar it says only contains 97 Mb. I've seen a number of 7 Gb somewhere too.

I have backups in Time Machine where it does show the files, even from after I found out I can't get to the documents folder. But I can't put the entire folder back at once. Something about locked files or permissions.

It seems as though Finder lost its way to the folder.

How do I fix this without losing the data and/or the backups in Time Machine? I've tried copying stuff from Time Machine, but it won't paste them anywhere. Can I save a backup from the entire folder to an external harddisc to save it first? I'm a bit scared to try to recover in safe mode.

Posted on Jan 19, 2021 4:11 PM

Top-ranking reply

DutchDude357 Author

Level 1

16 points

Posted on Jan 20, 2021 12:24 AM

Fixed! Just a simple reboot made the Documents folder accessible again! Pretty stressful, didn't know if a reboot would leave it totally broken.

The folder had some of the files in it, but not all. Probably because I tried to restore a couple of times before the reboot.

Several more partial restores from Time Machine never resulted in the same folder as before, always giving errors or just not coming to the same size as it used to be.

So I copied what it contained to an external HD, emptied the entire folder and restored the entire folder again. That worked. I now have the same size and number of files!

I hope they're not just back, but also alright!..

Again shows the importance of rebooting even a Mac every once in a while and to BACK UP!

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HELP! Can't open the Documents folder in Finder, Folder shows empty but still holds 16Gb.

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