MacOS – osx apply to enclosed items error

There's an option for and access control entry (the thing you created in Get Info) to be inherited, but Get Info doesn't give you the option to enable it. Also, you'll want to make sure you have full access to items she's added/edited there, and the easiest way to do this is to create a group for the two of you, and allow access to all group members.

1. Create a group (in System Preferences -> Accounts pane), and check the boxes to make both yourself and your wife members.

2. Open the Terminal utility, and run the command:

   chmod +a "group:admin allow list,add_file,search,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit" /path/to/the/folder
   

   (replacing /path/to/the/folder with the unix-style path to the folder you want to grant access to. If you aren't sure what that is, just paste in the rest of the line, including the space before /path/to/the/folder, and then drag-and-drop the folder from the Finder into the Terminal window, and it'll paste in the path for you.)

3. The access control entry you just created will be applied to new files and subfolders created inside that folder, but won't apply to the files and subfolders that're already there. So, Get Info on the folder and use the Apply to enclosed items option to apply it to the existing items.

Finder’s trash can is an amalgam of several different directories:

• ~/.Trash/
• /.Trashes/<uid>/ on each volume (including the startup volume)
  e.g. /Volumes/Big Media Volume/.Trashes/501/

Most trash operations will move the trashed item to the directory under your home directory. If you trash something on an separate volume, however, Finder will move the item into the volume’s /.Trashes/<uid>/ directory instead (because moving a file to a location on the same volume is very fast, but copying a file from some other volume to your home directory’s trash directory could be quite slow).

Try checking your main trash directory (in a Terminal window):

ls -ld ~/.Trash

If the result does not look like start with drwx------ and show your user’s “short name” twice (the second is actually a group name), then your personal trash directory has probably been fouled. You can move it aside then logout and login again:

cd ~ && mv .Trash .Trash.old
# now logout and re-login

This should create a new ~/.Trash directory for you. You may want to investigate the contents of the .Trash.old file/directory to try to determine its origin.

If the problem is with a per-volume trash directory, you should be able to use the same idea: move it aside, eject it, then remount it (disconnect and reconnect an external disk, reopen a disk image, use Disk Utility to remount an internal volume):

cd '/Volume/whereever' && mv .Trashes .Trashes.old
# then eject and remount

You may need … && sudo mv … if the volume has “Owners Enabled”.