I'm unable to grant full access to 2nd user account. What am I missing

While our MacBook Pro is out for repairs, I need a way to process my wife's emails and other business. So I'm trying to set up a 2nd user account for my wife on our iMac (running 10.7.5 Lion). Unfortunately, every step I've tried has failed to grant permission for her account to access the iMac desktop or launch applications other than Safari.

Here's what I've tried:

1. I created an account with my wife's name and password under Users & Groups in System Preferences.

2. In her Users & Groups account, I granted her Adminstrator privileges.

3. In the Sharing folder in System Preferences, I selected all the folders except those labeled "remote" and "xgrid" (whatever that is). I granted Read & Write privileges for each one. These included two Desktop folders, and I added the folder for Applications.

4. I made sure File Sharing was turned on, along with Printer Sharing, Web Sharing, Screen Sharing, Internet Sharing, etc.

5. Under Sharing Options, I noted a checkmark in the box labeled "Share files and folders using AFP", although the "number of users connected" was 0. I left that alone.

6. Because several sharing choices were listed as "blocked by firewall," I turned the Firewall setting off.

Despite all this, when I log in as my wife, I cannot launch any major applications except Safari, whether from the Dock or Applications folder. In fact, most of the apps in the folder are grayed out. And when I try to access the Desktop, Other Files, and various other folders, I receive a message that her account "does not have permission to see the contents." Why not? What have I overlooked?

This is becoming an urgent problem, because there's business that must be conducted. I have had similar problems with the iMac from the start, when it refused to accept me as the rightful owner of files that were transferred from our older Mac Pro dwesktop. Yikes!

Any help on this will be very much appreciated. Thanks.

Message was edited by: David Henderson7