this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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Undeletable files (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by TomMasz@lemmy.world to c/macos@lemmy.world
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I've got a couple of files (empty directories) in the Trash I can't delete. I own them, the mode is 777 and whether I use Empty Trash or use rm from the command line (with sudo or running as root) I get "Permission denied". I tried booting into recovery mode and setting csrutil to disabled but that did nothing. Any ideas? It's not the end of the world but every time I empty the trash I have to deal with the dialog box about not being able to delete them.

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[โ€“] TomMasz@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That didn't work either but the error message said something about needing it to be downloaded. That reminded me it was originally on OneDrive so I put it back when it started, went to the OneDrive site in a browser and was able to delete it from there. Thanks!

[โ€“] nicerdicer 1 points 3 weeks ago

That's the nasty thing with OneDrive: Usually, your file that you have created is on your computer. So this is considered as "original". A copy of that file is then uploaded into the cloud.

With OneDrive it is reversed. The file you created on your computer probably is saved to OneDrive immediately, making this the original file. On your computer there is just a copy that acts as an alias.

If you have Microsoft Office as a stand-alone version (e.g. home or student version) installed on your computer, go settings and look where you can change that files are saved onto your computer in order to avoid this in the future (this might not be an option if you use Office 365, as they do not support to change the save location any longer, as far as i recall).