Sharing & Permissions always "fetching..."?

I saw (and appreciate) Barney's answer, but it's not helpful.

No one else is accessing my system. Through the years I have accumulated a number of user ids (and passwords) to improve my security and then, afterwards, to make the files usable again. My problem is a file created and presumably owned by one user id which I am no longer using. When I try to permit a different user, the Info panel always shows fetching. I can't add another user. I can't stop fetching. And I can't save changes to the file.

The problem arose when I added a new 500 GB external drive (AFPS with Ventura) to my MBA (Intel, Ventura) and moved the files to it. I can edit the files on the new drive, but Save just isn't available.

The file is an Excel file, but this problem seems to be Apple's.