Is there any way to fix broken aliases in OS X Mountain Lion or stop them breaking?

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jlilest Author

Level 1

4 points

Is there any way to fix broken aliases in OS X Mountain Lion or stop them breaking?

I'm having a problem with OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4 server.

Mac Mini (2009 era)

2.53 gigahertz dual core

4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

I'm having numerous aliases breaking.

The path reported in the get info is to the correct location of the file, yet it reports it broken.

The computer has been rebooted.

Some of the aliases were created a very short time ago.

Failing that, are there any utilities to repair the alias.

Let me know if you need any additional information.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Mac mini (Late 2009), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4), Server

Posted on Aug 23, 2013 8:59 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

jlilest Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 25, 2013 7:35 AM in response to jlilest

I found what seems to be a working fix.

Open a finder window with the broken alias in it.

Be sure to add back the .alias extension if you removed it. (It may just need to be a different name than the original, but I haven't tested that)

Use the get info option to display information on the broken alias.

Copy the original path shown to the clipboard.

Use the finder menu option Go ! go to folder and paste the path into the prompt and click go.

Press the back arrow a couple of times and you should now be in the folder where the alias is.

The alias should work now.

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Answer 2

jlilest Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 7, 2013 7:29 AM in response to jlilest

and it isn't working now...

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,015 points

Sep 7, 2013 10:39 AM in response to jlilest

If you click on the alias, does it allow you to chose the correct path? Is there a Fix button?

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Answer 4

jlilest Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 7, 2013 11:01 AM in response to Eric Root

It does, but I have to browse to the original location.

If it let me put a path in, it wouldn't be so bad since I could copy and paste the path from the get info dialog.

It is also rather frustrating that get info shows the correct path to the file/folder.

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Answer 5

You Wish

Level 1

4 points

Nov 22, 2013 10:13 AM in response to jlilest

Aliases are still breaking in Mountain Lion. It's very annoying because enumerations of directories with broken aliases take seconds instead of milliseconds. Any fix for this (other than Mavericks)?

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Answer 6

Dec 9, 2013 7:33 PM in response to jlilest

Fixing folders full of broken aliases can be a real pain. I have yet to find a utility program that will fix the broken aliases by re associating their file paths.

One thing that has worked for me though, which saved a lot of time.

I did a CMD I (Get Info) on the broken alias & carefully noted where the alias path was...

& where the Original file was located. (Which happened to be the Desktop).

So I placed the original files back to where Cmd I expected to find the files,,, (The whole folder Full)

Then I Changed the name of the folder by ading a 1 to the end of the name.

.....(Can't have duplicate filenames in same location).

I then created a New Folder and renamed this folder with the Original Name of the folder I had just moved.

Then I dragged all the original files to the newly renamed folder.

This seemed to correct the file path because when I went back to the Aliases and did a Cmd R (Find Original) all alaises were now reconnected. So then I just put the New Folder containing all the originals back to where it came from.

Sure would be nice if Apple added an update to Disk Utility to perform this task... Much like "Repair Disk Permissions"

Untill then. Hope this Helps others with ALIAS Problems!

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Answer 7

Seanux

Level 1

5 points

Aug 17, 2015 11:22 AM in response to jlilest

I did something a bit easier (at least for me) than the other solution offered:

I deleted the folder that was causing my issue, recreated the folder and then created a new alias with terminal. In my case, I had an alias for my MobileSync directory so I could have my iOS backups on my 128GB SD card rather than the 128GB SSD to free up some room for other applications.

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