MacOS – “The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items.” when moving OneDrive files

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OneDrive has a feature called "Files On-Demand", I'm playing arround with it and trying to figure out how it works. It looks like OneDrive uses sparse files as placeholders before the really file is downloaded to local. I found that I can't move those sparse files out of the OneDrive folder when OneDrive is not running. The system asked me to enter password to allow this operation then it failed with message "The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items.".

I've changed file permissions to rwxrwxrwx and ACL permissions to Read & Write but still doesn't work.

I like to understand what is going underneath. Why those files can not being moved when OneDrive is not running. I appreciate your help!

Best Answer

I had the same problem. What worked for me was the open the source file, which probably triggered the on-demand download. Then I was able to move/copy it elsewhere.

You could probably also go to OneDrive Preferences and click "Turn Off Files On-Demand"

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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

MacOS – The document “X” could not be autosaved. You don’t have permission

Which place do you have users created on the server? Are they here: enter image description here

Or are they here: enter image description here

The important question is are they local users (which will give you the behavior you have) or are they local NETWORK users?

Best Answer

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Document Save Permission Error – Fix ‘The Document Could Not Be Saved’ on macOS

MacOS – The document “X” could not be autosaved. You don’t have permission

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