Finder: How do I fix grayed-out files?

I'm a new Apple computer user with 38 years of Windows experience. I managed to transfer some image files to an external SSD drive and they ended up all grayed out. Can't access these files or view them or move them.


I found a YouTube video that explains how to fix these files by using XCode. But the video is old and XCode may have changed. I can't get into an editing screen that will allow me to do what the YouTube video suggests. I'm supposed to apply "xattr"


Any help to fix these many grayed out files will be appreciated. I've searched everywhere on line without success.

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Apr 14, 2016 1:33 PM

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27 replies

Apr 15, 2016 12:05 PM in response to Linc Davis

I put this together in Irfanview: First entry was using the file name after I dragged and dropped it. Hit enter, went to Finder, closed it, rebooted it and no change. (By the way, I've rebooted the computer twice since yesterday last post). So I noticed backslashes befor spaces in the file name that happens when I drag and drop the file in Terminal. So I tried just typing the file name exactly as it appears (see insert of a few of the grayed files). Still no results. Hit enter and repeated as above. So this is where I left it this morning. (I covered up the path up to the dollar sign.)

User uploaded file

Apr 15, 2016 3:04 PM in response to Linc Davis

No. Would it overwrite the original file? The file is still grayed. Yes I did a restart of Finder. I looked down the list and re-sorted by size.

I found one of those exec files (unix executable) at the bottom, also with zero bytes but with Modified date of January 1, 1980 at 12:00 am. It was created at 1:39 pm today and that's probably when I redid your suggestion and did the screen capture I posted. But the file name is truncated to 1-1-04 (no pics 005).


I'm sure this whole mess was created when I turned off the computer while all those files were being copied. Grayed out files are not that rare from what I've seen on the Web. Seems somebody would have written a small utility to deal with it. I've programmed in Qbasic only.

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Finder: How do I fix grayed-out files?

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