Itunes download error "You do not have enough access privileges for this operation" operation"

I had the same problem, I solved it applying read/write permissions for me on my whole user folder (HD/users/your name) and enclosed items , not only on the music folder. Note : doing this will change all permissions of all elements in this folder, you may not want this (exemple : you may have to set back public/dropbox to "write only" for everyone if you want to keep using it).

FC--you rock! 😉 The article you linked saved me the agony of messing with this @#$%! any longer...just did my first restore from a [small] Time Machine backup volume, only to find I had lost ALL my itunes music [prolly didn't include in the small backup--Thank God I had a copy of most? of the library in another disk/OS version...

Anyways, been messing with this crapola too long, and it's time to cozy up with a brewsky and relax for now; CHEERS! to you

thanks fcphun!!!
I also had the exact same problem that bill. I have my itunes media in an external drive and the problem wouldn´t solve changing the access privileges of the external drive folders. I wanted to cry for a while but then I notice that the share folder on my computer hadn´t the read/write privileges activated. I change them the old fashioned way and everything is working now. Thanks man.

Here's another fix: When I got my first iPhone, I created an album in iPhoto that contained photos I wanted on the iPhone. I told iTunes to sync photos with that album. Fast forward several years, I started using Aperture. Still no problem until Apple "unified" the databases for iPhoto and Aperture. Recently I decided to clean up the Aperture/iPhoto library and noticed some duplicate items. Guess what, they were the albums I'd created in iPhoto to sync with. I deleted those albums. Then on the next iTunes sync I began getting the "you do not have enough access privileges for this operation" message. I tried several of the suggested permissions fixes for the Finder and the Aperture/iPhoto databases, but nothing worked. Then I noticed the error message popped up when iTunes was trying to sync the photos. I told iTunes not to sync any photos but to keep the current photos on the iPhone. Now the iTunes sync works to install app updates, podcasts, music, etc. Later I'll go back to figure out how to recreate the photo syncing albums so I can add new photos to the iPhone.

I downgraded from Mavericks to Mountain Lion (time machine restore) today and received the error.

By creating a /Users/shared directory with full read/write/execute (777) privilege this instantly fixed the problem for me.

Strange. I do not remember deleting my shared directory. You will need to lookup how to get root (sudo) permission in OS X. Then do this:

cd /Users

sudo mkdir shared

ls -l

sudo chmod 777 shared

ls -l

You should see (all accounts + shared):

drwxr-xr-x@ 56 jerry staff 1904 Nov 6 18:38 jerry

drwxrwxrwx 4 root admin 136 Nov 6 19:04 shared

The drwxrwxrwx allows anyone to create directories or add files in shared. Here is what iTunes created under shared:

drwxrwxrwx@ 2 jerry admin 68 Nov 6 19:04 SC Info

drwxrwxrwx@ 2 jerry admin 68 Nov 6 19:04 adi

Nothing in either directory (I looked for hidden with ls -la). A mystery..

Had the same problem after a OS X.9 Timemachine restore. Here's how I fixed it:

Hold down the Option key while starting iTunes

Reselect your own iTunes Library

When I did this, it opened right up and started "Updating the iTunes Library"

It was correctly pointed to the correct Library before but this did the trick.

Follow up, after the update was complete, same error!

Deleted all iTunes Library files, same problem

Deleted iTunes and reinstalled, same problem

Ran permissions fix from command line, same problem

Ran permissions fix via recover partition, same problem

Created entireley new library, same problem

Created a new user, SAME PROBLEM!!!

At this point it seems my only option is to reinstall OS X.9 and then reinstgall all my programs and move files back over. I don't trust restoring it from Time Machine because that's what started this fiasco in the first place...

This was it! After hours of frustrating searching and trying all the wrong things THIS was the winner and the key for me was "apply to all enclosed files." That extra step, which I had not been aware of before by clicking the little cog, was the winner and my downloads in iTunes kicked in instantly once I had done that and tried again.

Thank you SO much!

So the problem definitely occurred because of the Time Machine restore and it had nothing to do with the iTunes Library permissions. The only way I could fix this issue was to completely reinstall OS X.9 which I first had to do by using the recovery partition online.

Thanks- After trying every method about five times, the Apple instructions for creating a new shared folder using the command line actually worked. I had tried to start up iTunes about a hundred times and kept getting the message about not having enough privileges and another one saying unknown error -45054, so that iTunes would never even start up.

This problem resulted from my new dual drive setup with an SSD as the boot drive. I have the iTunes application on the SSD and my users folder with all the music etc. on the old hard drive.

Anyway, thanks fcphun for solving my problem!

This seems to have cured the problem for me. I had installed an SSD as boot drive, used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the system files over to it. Afterward Office or Mac 2011 required re-input of the Key, and iTunes said I didn't have enough access privileges. Tried a lot of different thing, this seemed to fix it. Thanks!

Thank you - I was having a similar problem (copying an iTunes Media folder from one external HD to another) and this was just about driving me nuts when I was trying to edit the metadata on the files in the new location. Your advice worked a charm and my sanity is restored!

I had four tunes that appeared to have failed to download due to "not enough access privileges" issues.

I did a spotlight search which located one of the tracks and so when played in iTunes they were then accessible in the iTunes library.

Still can't access the other 3 though !

I think the people having this problem moved iTunes music/movies from an older computer manually, maybe using networked drives. I would love to "Apply to all Enclosed Items" and I understand what you're trying to do with this (add the permissions all the way down the directory structure) but even though I click on my userid and have "Read/Write" that option is greyed out for me. It's also strange because the manual move worked for all my music and music videos, it's only movies that it won't download. I have high bandwidth and don't think it's that good an idea to download all my movies, but I would like to see them as available on my new machine.

Bill, I was in your situation and I think I have a solution but it's pretty radical. I thought I wasn't only able to see the movies that I bought but then I found that I couldn't buy a new song so it was a pretty serious situation (funny Apple took my money but the download to my hard drive failed so Apple doesn't expect that to happen very often). atobeam is suggesting the "Apply to All Enclose Items" but that option was greyed out for me. So this guy in the url below is saying to fix this at the Unix level (final note at the bottom of the page). Fixing Mac problems at the Unix level makes me nervous as **** but this is just loosening permissions so I gave it a try and it worked. All this GUI stuff is fine but chmod -R 1777 /users/shared is a hammer that has to work. You have to know the root password on your machine but I think with most mac's that's just your signon password. I chmod'd /users/shared and /users/mypersonaluserid (sub in your userid). If this bhall suggestion makes you nervous (you don't know how to do what he describes with Terminal), network around and find a friend who is familiar with Unix.

http://www.bhall.com/2013/09/fixing-itunes-error-you-do-not-have.html