Finder "Documents" shows folder names but I cannot click on any of the folders or files?

User uploaded file


Any idea what is going on here? Only happens if I navigate to 'Documents" from the Finder Sidebar. If I go to 'Documents' through my user root, it is fine.

Posted on Mar 25, 2014 11:34 AM

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9 replies

Mar 25, 2014 11:54 AM in response to rich230

And what happens if you change the view to List? What should be displayed in place of the circle is an icon. Is your Home folder relocated by chance? Or is the Documents folder relocated? I would start by this:


Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions - Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion


Boot to the Recovery HD:


Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.


Repair


When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.

Mar 25, 2014 1:18 PM in response to Kappy

User uploaded file

Interesting. I had never done that before. In fact I did try to create two different users on my mac but in the end went back to a consolidated user (attempting to put a hard seperation between business and personal files). Do you believe repairing the harddrive will fix this problem? BTW, Thanks for the help.


-Rich

Mar 25, 2014 1:31 PM in response to rich230

Don't rightly know. Combining two users is very problematical because of different ownership privileges. Do you still have the two user accounts? It is possible this is all caused by something you did trying to "combine" the two.


I have never come across a Finder display like what you have posted.


My instructions would not help this type of issue. You would need to perform a different procedure to correct permissions issues within a user account, namely:


Reset User Permissions and ACLs in Lion/Mountain Lion



Boot to the Recovery HD:


Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.


From the Utilities menu select Terminal. At the Terminal prompt enter: resetpassword. Press RETURN. When the window opens select your startup drive where it says "Select the volume containing the user account:" At the bottom of the window you will see, "Reset Home folder permissions and ACLs." Click on the Reset button.

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Finder "Documents" shows folder names but I cannot click on any of the folders or files?

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