I cannot open these files with the boxed question marks, even though they are .jpg, .docx, and .pdf. I have opened them before, but now Finder cannot recognize them to open them. Manually choosing Preview (for .jpg and .pdf) and Pages (for .docx) does not work either.
I have searched online and in this forum and cannot find anything.
Has anyone seen this before.
iMac, macOS Sierra (10.12.5), null
UPDATE: I did some more digging into this.
The files above were on a USB drive that had been ExFAT-formatted. The files were saved to it while I was using a Windows 10 PC.
I deleted the files, re-formatted the USB drive as ExFAT, and plugged the USB into the Windows 10 PC again, saving the files to the USB drive again.
When I plug the USB into my iMac (macOS Sierra Version 10.12.5) and view the files, I see the boxed question marks again.
Could it have something to do with the way Windows 10 is saving the files to the USB drive? Or is it something with the way macOS Sierra is reading the files?
Note the "exec" thumbnails that Finder is showing me. Could that be a helpful clue?
I hope so, because I am clueless about this...
An article : macOS Sierra: If the Dock contains an icon with a question mark
If an app’s icon is in the Dock and you delete the app from your Mac, the icon remains in the Dock but is covered by a question mark.
Remove the question mark icon: Drag the icon out of the Dock until you see Remove.
If you want to download an app again, see Manage app purchases and subscriptions.
That would indicate that there is some unprintable and unknown character at the end of the file name. I'm not sure why it would be there. If it is anything like a null character in a file name, it will be difficult if not impossible to fix.
Do you have a backup of these files which do not have that at the end of the file name?
Windows appears to be putting an additional non-printing character at the end of the extension.
Since macOS doesn't know what a jpg? is, and it has the "executable" bit set, it shows as a unix executable file.
Thank you for sharing this one. I saw it but it doesn't seem to be the same problem. I followed the instructions and there is no change.
What does the question-mark-inside-a-box icon mean when it appears beside a file in Finder?
