How to fix: files are deleted immediately and can't be found on Trash folder.

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Level 1

14 points

How to fix: files are deleted immediately and can't be found on Trash folder.

When I delete a file, a warning window shows up "This item will be deleted immediately. You can’t undo this action." it comes with Cancel and Delete buttons. If I select Delete, the file will be gone, and cannot be found on Trash folder.

The system seem to delete the file immediately and permanently. The file cannot be moved to Trash folder and be put back when I regret the deletion. How can I fix this? This happened just recently. I used to be abele to drag files to Trash bin and put files back before.

macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Mar 29, 2018 12:55 PM

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Answer 1

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aworlduser Author

Level 1

14 points

Mar 29, 2018 4:43 PM in response to aworlduser

I solved this issue afterwards by doing steps below:

1. check your permission is Read&Write

1.1 Finder-Go-Home (or Shift-Command-H)

1.2 mouse right click, and select Get Info

1.3 find Sharing&Permissions

1.4 make sure your privilege is Read&Write

some users may find the issue has been solved when they correct the privilege. But in my case, my permission setting was correct. So here is what I do:

2. open terminal (Finder-Go-Utilities-Terminal)

and type

mkdir ~/.Trash

and it returns File exists

(make sure there is a space before~, the 1st time when I tried it, I forgot to leave a space, and it returned No such file or directory)

And then I type

sudo rm -ri ~/.Trash

and it will ask you to type your password, and return this question

remove /Users/xxxx/.Trash?

and I type

yes

what this does is to do a deep cleaning of the trash folder

Close the terminal. Wha-la, I am able to drag files to trash folder and put them back. When I delete a file, it will show in the Trash folder as well. Problem solved.

If you find that you have the same issue after a software update, you can try this to fix. In my case, I think it’s the update causes this error. This issue seems to happen to other users in the past, and apparently it is not a new thing. I have been using this MacBook Pro for 4-5 years, and just got this issue in 2018. The trashing thing didn’t act weird before. Maybe if you are lucky, you will get this bug. lol

-

Reference from this site:

Files dragged to the Trash "will be deleted immediately" alert

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/trash.html#Anchor-Files-46919

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Answer 2

Niel

Level 10

741,971 points

Mar 29, 2018 1:38 PM in response to aworlduser

Click on the item in the Finder's sidebar with the house icon and verify that you are able to write to this folder in the Sharing & Permissions section of the Get Info window, and that it isn't locked; if it is already set this way and you get that error, choose Utilities from the Finder's Go menu, open the Script Editor, and run the following:

do shell script "mkdir ~/.Trash"

If you get a message stating that the folder exists, run the following:

set theUID to (do shell script "echo $UID")

do shell script "chown " & theUID & " ~/.Trash" with administrator privileges

do shell script "chmod u+rwx ~/.Trash"

do shell script "mv ~/.Trash ~/Desktop/Trash.old"

do shell script "mkdir ~/.Trash"

tell application "Finder" to quit

delay 2

tell application "Finder" to run

(159176)

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How to fix: files are deleted immediately and can't be found on Trash folder.

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