Can't open Preview & TextEdit after installing OS X 10.8.3

MarkDouma®,

Inside the Containers folder, there are subfolders named:

com.apple.Preview

com.apple.TextEdit

Inside those subfolders there are:

Container.plist (document)

Data (subfolder)

OldData (subfolder

Which do I delete?

Everyone,

I am having a similar problem with my two sons' computers. After installing the update via the Administrator account on both computers, I get the same message when they login to their Standard accounts. The message appears without starting any applications and re-appears every 20-30 seconds. I have tried deleting the preferences in the individual accounts, but haven't tried the container folders yet. I think it may have something to do with permissions and the Standard accounts. Please advise if any additional useful information becomes available. Also, Apple, if you are watching this, there is a problem with the latest 10.8.3 update!!! Please fix it!

garykaifong@gmail.com,

That did it!

Thanks so much!

If I am having the issue with the Mail app should I delete the com.apple.mail folder?

This 10.8.3 upgrade has trashed my wife's account on our iMac. Mine seems ok, but she is unable to run Mail, Aperture or App Store. I tried deleting the various plist files as suggested, but still get 'Mac OS X needs to repair your Library to run applications.' Of course it never succeeds. Help!

I'm definitely not going to upgrade the other machines until this is fixed. Very, very unimpressed.

Fixed it! Seems to be a permissioning problem in the Library folder. This is what I did

Open Finder
Go -> Go to Folder -> ~/Library

Get Info on the Library folder

Set the permissions as follows:

<username>(Me): Read & Write
everyone: No Access

You should have just these two. If there are any other account or group names remove them.

Click on the little gear and select 'Apply to enclosed items...'

It will take a while to go through the entire library and change the permissions. After that everything worked properly, for me at least.

Mike from Berko: Thanks! This worked for me as well.

Mike from Berko,

This worked for my son's computer as well. I had to remove a group called Staff and change the other user groups as you stated in your post. Worked after a restart. Thank you!

To be clear, MarkDouma® has the correct solution:

Go to your user Library - that is: in Finder, hold down the option key and select the Library folder from the Go menu.

In the Library folder, select the Contatiners folder and trash the offending com.apple.xxxxx folder (for most of us it would be the Preview and the TextEdit folders)

A restart is probaly advised but not absolutly necesaary.

(We had this problem on only one of our five Macs.)

debweb57 wrote:

To be clear, MarkDouma® has the correct solution:

Go to your user Library - that is: in Finder, hold down the option key and select the Library folder from the Go menu.

In the Library folder, select the Contatiners folder and trash the offending com.apple.xxxxx folder (for most of us it would be the Preview and the TextEdit folders)

A restart is probaly advised but not absolutly necesaary.

(We had this problem on only one of our five Macs.)

To be even clearer he had the correct solution to a diferent problem. That's the traditional solution to a corrupted plist. It didn't fix my issue, which was that the programs couldn't update files in the library due to permissioning problems. Seems like this was the same for a couple of other people too.

Yes, I tried deleting the container folders as well. Didn't work.

I also tried the Repair Permissions utility, which I run all the time. It did not work.

I guess it goes with out saying that if the initial window that popped up and said it was going to Repair the Library actually worked this would never have been a problem.

So, for whatever reason a number of the things that one would expect to work on this issue did not work. The only thing that finally worked for me was Mike from Berko's solution.

This fixed my issues as well. Although, I also deleted the three container folders for 1Password as well as the preview and text edit ones.

Deleted folders and I can open text files now. Thanks everyone!