this operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occured (error code -1407)

Thanks for your reply.

I came across all of the linked info yesterday, and most of it made no sense applied to macOS Mojave, or it flat out didn't work, and no such file existed.

Note:

• Click on the Get Info icon. Now you see the Macintosh HD window on the screen.
• To your left-hand side, users are requested to get a list of hard drives from the menu section and check whether the CD ROM is well connected or not.
• 
  

WHAT!! There is no such list on the left side of Get Info. So none of the remaining suggestions even apply. Additionally it is my understanding that Repair Permissions hasn't been available nor necessary on the last several iterations of macOS. I haven't done it since pre-Yosemite.

• When you see the hard drives list, Select the hard disk type and click the on Repair Disk Permissions button. Follow all the given instructions on your screen.
• Click on the Get Info icon. Now you see the Macintosh HD window on the screen.
• To your left-hand side, users are requested to get a list of hard drives from the menu section and check whether the CD ROM is well connected or not.
• When you see the hard drives list, Select the hard disk type and click the on Repair Disk Permissions button. Follow all the given instructions on your screen.

Next:

Force Quit the Finder

Has zero effect on the problem.

Next:

Run this command in Terminal: sudo chflags –R nouchg

This returns -R does not exist.

Finally:

• Remove the file written as: apple.finder.plist

This file does not exist anywhere on my Mac.

So I think all of these above suggestion are far too old for Mojave.

I have always have my Library folder showing. I found it irritating back when Apple decided to hide it. It felt like they were trying to legislate intelligence to ignorant, know-nothing users to prevent them from damaging something in there because they didn't know what they were doing. I've been using Macs since 1989, macOS v6, so I have a history. I used to show it via a Terminal command but thankfully Apple finally did make it a bit easier with a checkbox.

I haven't ran Disk Utility on the two TM drives. I have always found DU to be a lightweight when it came to fixing drives. But I'll give it another go. I did run Disk Warrior 5.2 on both drives however. It took 4+ hours on each one and it repaired a lot of icon flags and text encodings among other things. But it made no difference to the -1407 error.

I have done that to my Home folder in the past, probably many times, but I did it again this morning, just for grins sake. At first I was wondering why my Home folder would have anything to do with this error. But, after mulling it over, I realized that I was trying to restore the file to my Desktop, which I have always been able to do in the past. And obviously my Desktop folder is in my Home folder. Hmm. So, last night before I went to bed, I tried restoring a file from the TM backup again, but this time I was restoring to another drive in my Mac, one that has the ownership ignored. It worked! So this is most likely some kind of permission issue somewhere that I would like to resolve. But at least now I have a viable workaround. I have always hated permissions since macOS went Unix. Necessary, but irritating to say the least. Kind of like the rebuilding of the Desktop file of the 90s.

Thanks again. Please chime in if you have any other ideas on this.

J D Thomas

ThomaStudios

I wish DW would get the next update that supports APFS!

I applied the Sharing & Permissions to everything in my Home folder and then tried to restore a file again to my Desktop. Same error. I then tried to restore via Time Machine, which puts the file into the original folder. Same error.

I don't keep much of anything really in my Home folder. The largest folder in there is my Library folder. I keep everything on Dropbox since I need access from two Macs, and iPhone and occasionally an iPad. So it's the best way to have that access. I also keep my Dropbox folder in the Shared folder on both of my Macs, instead of my Home folder, and I did this specifically to avoid these f***ing permission issues. I have version history on Dropbox if all else fails, like it is happening now. But this used to work perfectly, and it's irritating that it's suddenly broken.

Apple has been needing to take their head out of their *** for a long time. This is just one more example of their corporate and development strong-arming.