Permissions always "fetching..."

Hi Barney. Yeah, I guess I'm just basing it on the fact that in all of my 30+ years working with Macs I have never encountered such a profound system failure before until the recent (unannounced) shifting of all cloud platforms from obvious folders to a hidden container within the (invisible) Library. I had Dropbox backup my local folder and suddenly found things were in an Ouroboros loop of my Mac containing Dropbox, which contained my Mac which contained Dropbox...

Finder crashed anytime I tried to open a file from within an app or doubleclick in the folder. Files I had been working on days before were suddenly greyed out and unresponsive, with no option to download.

Things got messy. Then, one day I suddenly got this message... my local folder ID had changed, but I didn't understand why it was iMac-local-2 and not iMac-local-1.

So, I decided to create a new user and delete the old.

I guess some of us aren't clever enough to use Terminal to delete User folders instead of relying on Ventura's 'oh-so-reliable' built-in UI.

How does one do that again?

So I tried that and got... some info... that I don't understand what to do with. I just tried it out on the Acoustic Drums folder and that's the result.

Apologies for being an oldie. What can I do next with that info?

And then this happened...

So yeaaaah, just now, as I was typing out the above, I went into Users & Groups within System Settings and clicked the Delete Account option for the old account that I originally deleted.

I click the button, it disappears from the Users & Groups list but the folder remains within Users on the hard drive. So I decided to reboot, just to make sure everything is fine. But I get an error saying that System Settings has interrupted Restart.

And I see this lovely message. Why is it being backed up if I wanted to delete it entirely?

And, I am guessing that if I manually drag the unwanted (now cursed) old Account into the Bin, I will get the same permissions issue as before.

<sigh>

Hi Barney. Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I thought that would work, but it didn't. I tried creating and logging into another Admin Account, but that didn't work either.

Oddly enough, when I went to create the new account, I decided to use my earlier account name, and the computer said it already existed and would I like to use that. I said, heck yeah, thinking I'd be able to delete the files within, but that didn't work either.

Seems like there has been some sort of fundamental permissions screw-up within Ventura after deciding to shift all cloud backups to within the Library.

I'm close to smashing my mac now, out of anger and frustration.

Thanks again for replying, Barney. Yeah, I guess I'm one of the lucky ones who had Macs that just work, for the most part. I never really had a reason or inkling to look under the hood or utilise Terminal.

For sure, the problem probably mostly lies with Dropbox, seeing as it is the only Cloud Storage client of the three I use that is having any of these issues, but I hoped that Apple would have some... advice/workaround.

So, I am stuck with around 13 invisible folders in my Bin that won't delete because they are from another account that does not exist. None of the folders can be taken out of the Bin because they need to be downloaded first, and they cannot be downloaded because they need to be downloaded.

It's an interesting conundrum, and I hoped there would be some specific advice on identifying and changing these files' permissions so that they were visible and editable to the current user.

Thanks again though for your help. It is appreciated.

No, no errors. In fact nothing seemed to happen at all. I checked the Get Info and it had the same Fetching message.

So I thought about it for a minute, decided to reinstall the old User Account from a Time Machine backup, installed that overnight, logged into it and reconnected the DropBox account. This installed the missing IK Multimedia folders and when I was sure they had all been downloaded locally I logged out and into the new Account.

I ran your code in Terminal and the effect was instantaneous. The contents of those folders all suddenly became visible within the Bin, and all the Get Info permissions switched from Fetching to my Account Name.

It was super exciting to see how instant the result was.

I clicked the Empty Bin button and the whole mess just disappeared, like magic. Or at least like how it should have.

Truly appreciate your help, Barney.

Uh... what does recursively mean? :)

Many thanks. I will try to get my 10-year-old to explain this because I am now officially too old to figure it out.

Ok. Me stoopido. I figured out what you were asking me to do, so I ran it through from the diarmaidcollins folder, and then hit Empty Bin but the files didn't delete.