Documents Folder Completely Missing

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Level 1

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Documents Folder Completely Missing

Hi there,

I've been on my iMac all day and all of a sudden my Documents folder is gone and my trash can is empty. (I've been working in Word all day and I did no upgrades, downloads, etc.) The folder is still visible on the Finder window, but it's empty and nothing happens when I click on it. When I access it through the "Go" menu of the finder it will open on the screen, but it's empty. My Downloads folder also disappeared from the Finder window. I selected to add it back, but it won't. When I try to access it through the "Go" menu nothing happens. I've tried the following:

Macintosh HD - User - [my admin profile] - Documents: Empty with no modified date [I can access the Downloads folder and content here, but nowhere else.]

Terminal: - ls-al~/Documents (based on a previous 'Apple discussion answer' recommendation): I get "no such file or directory" (with spaces in between them it says "command not found")

I also reopened Word and chose "Open Recent." The file I was working on today hasn't saved since yesterday (even though I manually saved it multiple times today). I'm able to open another file so I looked at the properties and it says it's in my Documents folder; which doesn't make any sense.

I have TimeMachine backed up automatically to an external hard drive, and I think I can figure out how to restore a backup. But I'd lose all the work I've done in the last hour. I guess I could sacrifice that if I absolutely had to, but I really don't want that outcome.

Help!

Posted on Apr 20, 2021 1:11 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,770 points

Apr 20, 2021 6:33 PM in response to Ashley8098

It sounds like everything is there, but it is not showing.

Maybe try booting into Safe Mode and see if you can see them.

Then, restart normally and see what happens.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,770 points

Apr 20, 2021 3:31 PM in response to Ashley8098

Terminal: - ls-al~/Documents (based on a previous 'Apple discussion answer' recommendation): I get "no such file or directory" (with spaces in between them it says "command not found")

The spaces are required. The command is this (you can copy and paste it into Terminal).

ls -al ~/Documents

Arbitrarily guessing at how to type commands into the Terminal can be disastrous.

It can also be disastrous to paste commands into the Terminal you find on the internet.

Is your drive full?

Maybe try running First Aid in Disk Utility.

Restoring from the backup may be necessary, but it would be nice to figure out why it is not showing.

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Answer 3

Ashley8098 Author

Level 1

15 points

Apr 20, 2021 4:53 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks so much for the help!

I ran the command through the Terminal and I got a "total 1464" (which sounds about right for the number of documents I have) and then rows of code that just stops and brings me back to the open prompt. Each row begin with "drwx------@", "drwxr-xr-x@", "-rw-------@", "-rw-r--r-- " and so on, and then ends with the top-level file names (both files and folder names).

I also ran the First Aid in the Disk Utility, and got no errors. But I didn't get the Documents folder back.

But here's what's fascinating. I went to the "About my Mac" to check my storage, just in case. (It's fine; I'm only using 800GB/1TB.) I clicked "Manage" to see the breakdown of the storage and the Documents was a pinwheel for over a minute. Then, it appears and I can see all 50GB of my Documents. When I click "File Browser" on the far right everything shows up and I can even open a Word doc. However, I clicked "Show in Finder" (on the bottom left of the window) and the Finder window opens, but nothing's there.

Any thoughts?

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Answer 4

Ashley8098 Author

Level 1

15 points

Apr 21, 2021 7:47 AM in response to Barney-15E

The links to the Finder must have broken. I restarted and all the content came back. I had to reset all of the Finder preferences, but that's minor. Thanks for the help!

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Documents Folder Completely Missing

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