Don't have sufficient access privileges

You will have to change the permissions on the folder in order to access its contents. The red minus sign indicates that you do not have access to the folder or its contents. To change that open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder and enter or paste the following at the prompt:

sudo chown -R yourusername:

Put a space after the colon then drag the folder's icon into the Terminal window and press RETURN. You will be prompted to enter your admin password which will not be echoed. Yourusername is the username you assigned to your account.

Message was edited by: Kappy

I was able to resolve this problem. First you must go to accounts in system preferences and reset your account name and password to exactly match what it was when the locked file was first saved. Then go to the file and click File > Get Info or hit the more info tab in the preview pane which will bring up the info box.

Go down to the bottom of the info box under sharing and permissions. You will see the name and privilege area grayed out so go down and click on the lock. This will require you to enter user name and password. As long as this entry matches what was present when the file was saved the privilege section opens and just use the up arrows to adjust the privilege to read and write. Now you will be able to open the file and complete your work.

This illustrates how important keeping user info correct after doing an erase and install!!

Press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window on the drive. At the bottom is a checkbox labeled 'Ignore permissions on this volume.' Be sure it's unchecked. If it isn't then uncheck it and relaunch the Finder (press COMMAND-OPTION-ESC to open the Task Manager, select the Finder and click on the Relaunch button.) Check what permissions are indicated for the drive.

Where did this particular folder come from? If you open the Get Info window on it what permissions are shown?

Above the checkbox is the listing of assigned permissions to whatever was selected for Get info.

I think there was a problem created when data were transferred under a different username hence the prohibited access. Are any other folders similarly affected?

When you do a Get Info on this particular folder what is shown in the Sharing and Permissions section at the bottom?

Kappy, I have this same problem with a back up copy I made on an external hard drive using carbon copy cloner.

I went to the apple genius bar and did a erase and install on my iMac. Mac runs great now but I couldn't access either of my back ups due to user ID issues associated with a mistake at the bar. Anyway i was able to use home sharing to move almost all of my data over from my MacBook pro but there are a set of tax files that weren't duplicated on the MacBook I need to get off the clone copy.

I am set up as admin on the iMac. Is there anyway I can change the permissions on the file that currently says "no access" under sharing and permissions: in doc info section?