MacOS – How to Find the Last Saved File

I was able to fix the problem for CleanWriterPro by removing extended ACL from the affected directories (Documents, Desktop):

$ chmod -R -N Desktop Documents

For others with the same problem, I'd suggest checking the permissions of at least the following places:

• ~/Library/Autosave Information
• ~/Library/Containers – see Unsaved Files in OS X Lion
• the folders containing the problematic files

Use the command

$ ls -le Documents

to show also the extended ACLs when looking at the problem. Finder will not show all ACL information.

There is a related discussion at Apple Discussion Forums, Lion Permissions Problem. It proposes the solution of removing all ACL from home directory and restoring the ACLs for some default folders. Please read the entire post from there; but the commands are:

chmod -R -N ~
chmod +a "everyone deny delete" ~/ ~/Desktop ~/Documents ~/Downloads ~/Library ~/Movies ~/Music ~/Pictures ~/Public

The ACL prevents the user from deleting or renaming the default folders.

An unintuitive but maybe safer(?) alternative is described at OS X Daily: Repair user permissions in Mac OS X Lion

You can't.

Keep doing the manual versioning series that you should always have been doing. At each milestone save a new copy with a new file title that describes what it is.

All that's new with a Lion Autosave/Versions app is that you'll have to suffer horrifically each time you do so.

1. Start with your working document, save it as "MyReport - workingcopy".

2. When you want to save your manual milestone version, first press CMD-S to "Save a Version" (or you may get a dialogue about reverting to a previous version).

3. Then select File / Duplicate , which will pop up a second window of your open document (not prompt you to save a copy to disk).

4. The new window will be titled "MyReport - workingcopy copy". This is very confusingly a tentative filename only that doesn't actually exist as a (user accessible) file on your drive yet.

5. Now press CMD-S to save that open duplicated document window. This will give you the normal file save dialogue where you can rename it "MyReport - Milestone 1".

6. Now CLOSE THAT NEW DOCUMENT "MyReport - Milestone 1" and go back to working on the previous document "MyReport - workingcopy" -- leaving your new milestone file safe (for now) in its saved state.

If you've cleverly thought of going to System Preferences / Keyboards to create a CMD-D keyboard shortcut for that Duplicate command, TextEdit at least will completely ignore it.

The shortcut will not appear in the File menu next to the Duplicate menu item. Pressing it will do nothing.