Hey can someone help me? I'm on OS 10.4.9 (Running protools so I don't want to upgrade beyond that yet).....I had a DOCUMENTS folder full of files....Tonight I turn on the machine and the shortcut on the sidebar is gone and the whole folder (when I navigate to it) appears EMPTY. I ran the INVISIBLE script thing from another thread on this...Unfortunately that didn't do anything. Still not there. I got no clue what's goin on! Anybody have any other ideas?? (I've been on 10.4.9 for months now just in case anybody was going to ask...haven't done anything out of the ordinary at all in the last few days as far as I can remember!) Thanks for the help!
Documents folder disappeared!! (tried other solution and no good)
- Thread starter Dan36124
- Start date
Greg_Reez
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Did you change the name of your home folder? (Its the folder with the icon of a house in your sidebar, it may be called "home" or your name). This is the only thing I can think of, since renaming your home folder will cause your OS to no longer recognize it.
OS won't recognize it until it restarts for the first time, and it'll create a new profile, and change the name of the home folder to what it used to be. It will basically start over to how it appeared when you first turned it on and restore everything to its defaults. All files and folders on the desktop will go away as well as that "documents" folder you mentioned. This is all I can think of for now since this happened to me last year sometime. If this IS what you did, there IS a way you can get it back to my knowledge.
Hughvane
Registered
I'm assuming, because you don't actually say so, that you've used Spotlight to try and find the files. I'm sure you can remember the names of at least some of the files, so use a keyword from one (eg. 'homework', or 'plans') and type it into Spotlight. [A program similar to Spotlight, but more thorough, is EasyFind.]
How did you "navigate" to the Documents folder? I'm not using my No 1 computer with Tiger right now, but with Panther, and using its search function, I find 8 Documents folders. It may seem strange, but maybe the one you "navigated" to isn't the one you're looking for.
Third suggestion is FileBuddy. It's not free, but it's good - very good - at finding things, and you can use it in trial mode for a while.
Good luck!
Hey guys - Thanks for the quick help...
Greg - I don't think that's what I did...Everything else on the computer appears to be the same. Just DOCUMENTS is gone from the sidebar shortcut thing....And the DOCUMENTS folder I find under the HOUSE icon (the only one) has nothing in it. I know I had at least 50 files in the other one!
Dickster - Yeah no time machine...No other way to rollback, eh?
Hughvane - Yeah I've used spotlight to look for the files...They ain't there. I knew a few filenames that would be there...and NOTHIN. Poof. It's so bizarre. As for navigating to it, i go to the MACINTOSH HD, USERS, then the only HOUSE icon has my name on it...Inside there are DESKTOP, LIBRARY, MOVIES, etc......I click DOCUMENTS and there is my empty folder. I don't get it! Where the hell did the files go?? Argh!
I can't possibly believe I deleted that folder. That would be ludicrous. Say for instance I had...Would the system automatically create another DOCUMENTS folder which would be empty? And would it make a sidebar shortcut?
Greg - I don't think that's what I did...Everything else on the computer appears to be the same. Just DOCUMENTS is gone from the sidebar shortcut thing....And the DOCUMENTS folder I find under the HOUSE icon (the only one) has nothing in it. I know I had at least 50 files in the other one!
Dickster - Yeah no time machine...No other way to rollback, eh?
Hughvane - Yeah I've used spotlight to look for the files...They ain't there. I knew a few filenames that would be there...and NOTHIN. Poof. It's so bizarre. As for navigating to it, i go to the MACINTOSH HD, USERS, then the only HOUSE icon has my name on it...Inside there are DESKTOP, LIBRARY, MOVIES, etc......I click DOCUMENTS and there is my empty folder. I don't get it! Where the hell did the files go?? Argh!
I can't possibly believe I deleted that folder. That would be ludicrous. Say for instance I had...Would the system automatically create another DOCUMENTS folder which would be empty? And would it make a sidebar shortcut?
Greg_Reez
Registered
After you restarted, did you still have the same icons on your desktop and dock? Did you still have all of your bookmarks and settings in your internet browser? Did it seem like anything was back to its default settings?
You can also probably try going to the programs (ex: MS Word) of some the files you had in that folder (ex: a word doc) and trying to open recent files from the file menu.
Or try this, click on your HD icon, go to Users. If you have more than one user look through their files, each user will have a Documents folder also, click in those.
I assume you've already checked your trash. Also, when searching, use "documents" as a search term to try to find all folders named documents.
I've never before seen anything like this, and if it does happen, its usually because of something specific, it's not something that would just happen out of thin air. I'm 97.5% certain that you could have done something inadvertently a very long time ago, and finally restarting your system caused it to take effect.
You can also probably try going to the programs (ex: MS Word) of some the files you had in that folder (ex: a word doc) and trying to open recent files from the file menu.
Or try this, click on your HD icon, go to Users. If you have more than one user look through their files, each user will have a Documents folder also, click in those.
I assume you've already checked your trash. Also, when searching, use "documents" as a search term to try to find all folders named documents.
I've never before seen anything like this, and if it does happen, its usually because of something specific, it's not something that would just happen out of thin air. I'm 97.5% certain that you could have done something inadvertently a very long time ago, and finally restarting your system caused it to take effect.
Hey Greg - Thanks for the ideas...Unfortunately I've tried all of em....Recent files (can't seem to find any)....USERS - There's only one...DAN...And that documents folder is the new, blank one. Trash...I've dumped it since this first happened....Searched for files I knew were in there.....And searched for "documents" and only the new folder shows up.
It's really bizarre. I can't explain it. All I know is I used to have a documents folder with a ton of stuff in it and it had a shortcut on the left sidebar. One day I went to drag something to it and noticed it wasn't on the sidebar. Found the actual folder and it was empty.
Oh - and nothing was ever reset to defaults...Icons on the desktop, bookmarks.....all normal. Only thing that makes sense is that I somehow deleted the folder. Which I just can't see myself doing. I don't get it. Also, I restart this machine every time I use it..I go for a week at a time without using the Mac, so it must have been something I JUST did before restarting that time........
My head hurts on this one. The good news is that there was nothing CRITICAL in that foler...But it bothers me that I have ZERO clue how it happened....
It's really bizarre. I can't explain it. All I know is I used to have a documents folder with a ton of stuff in it and it had a shortcut on the left sidebar. One day I went to drag something to it and noticed it wasn't on the sidebar. Found the actual folder and it was empty.
Oh - and nothing was ever reset to defaults...Icons on the desktop, bookmarks.....all normal. Only thing that makes sense is that I somehow deleted the folder. Which I just can't see myself doing. I don't get it. Also, I restart this machine every time I use it..I go for a week at a time without using the Mac, so it must have been something I JUST did before restarting that time........
My head hurts on this one. The good news is that there was nothing CRITICAL in that foler...But it bothers me that I have ZERO clue how it happened....