Original item can't be found in Mac OS Catalina

I installed Mac OS Catalina 10.15 beta.


When I go to Finder and tap on folders in the sidebar, an alert window appears saying the folder "can't be opened because the original item can't be found".


I have tried the following...

- Force Quit and restart Finder.

- Dragging and dropping a folder called "Data" to the desktop. It just disappears from Finder without appearing on the desktop.

- Rebook Mac in recovery mode > Disk Utility > Mount Disks > First Aid > Restart. When I do this I see two disks that can be mounted.

Macintosh HD

Macintosh HD - Data

I have tried mounting them together and separately without success.


Any suggestions to fix this?

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Posted by
diabolho
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  • I had the same problem. I fixed it by removing Documents and Desktop from the Finder sidebar and then adding them back. Here's how to do it Open Finder. On the Finder sidebar, right-click (or Ctrl-click) on Documents and choose Remove from Sidebar. Do the same thing for Desktop. On the menu bar at the top, click Finder and choose Preferences. Click the Sidebar tab at the top. Check the box for Documents and Desktop. Close the Finder Preferences window. NOTE: I've read that some users have a similar problem that might be related to iCloud and having the Documents and Desktop folders synced there. I don't use iCloud for these things, so I can't say if the problem is also caused by that.

    —
    Omz5

  • this worked perfect!

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    CCb

  • thanks!!! this worked for me too. i had just removed files from my sync'd dropbox when this issue popped up

    —
    jannster

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In Finder look on the side and delete what's not working. Then click on iCloud Drive and drag what you need to the side. This worked for me.

Posted by
musicandmacs
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  • That worked for me. It was the iCloud sync that was not working.

    —
    cemlynjones
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I found a solution...

- Search for folders in Spotlight

- Drag them into Favorites sidebar

- If necessary, right click and select "Show in enclosing folder"

- Drag folder display at top of window bar back into Favorites sidebar


Only thing that still doesn't work is displaying top level folder when clicking on Macintosh HD.

Posted by
diabolho
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Thanks. Have checked it out because I found another solution.

Posted by
diabolho
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What I did was delete the desktop folder and documents folder and re-added them into the sidebar

Posted by
ciscohiker
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Remove them from sidbar and drag and drop them from user profile to sidebar, It worked for me

Posted by
aht6
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I got the same error message after upgrading to a new computer and transferring info from my backup drive. Thank you SO much for this simple solution! It worked for me and saved me so much frustration trying to find a solution.
Posted by
Caukie
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I fixed this issue by renaming my own macbook's HD from "Macintosh HD" to something else, next it started working!!! I think error was because of same name on remote mac (air m1) and my own

Posted by
l3v1k
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none of these worked for me?????

Posted by
davidmandee
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i've been bashing my head about it for a while now. i looked under my home folder /Users/myname/ and saw that there were two aliases "Documents" and "Desktop" that were actually broken links. i removed them, and mac auto created them again, now all is fine :)

Posted by
eldarnegrin
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  • Thanks Eldar....like you I have spent hours trying find out what happened after I tried deleting the contents of Download folder and somehow managed to delete the folder as well. I then emptied the trash so all gone. I followed your advice via home folder in Finder and sure enough there was Download with 'alias' marked alongside. As it was only 68bytes it clearly wasn't anything significant (I know very little about computers) so I deleted it and then it automatically popped up again but this time as a folder 'Downloads'. I dragged it across to the side bar and then took a screen shot to test it and sure enough the screen shot appeared in the 'new' Download folder. So 100% ready to go for which I thank you !

    —
    Simonmclayton
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This also happens to me periodically. And, while I agree that the "broken" bookmark can be repaired by deleting it and then drag/dropping a new bookmark from the target, I would prefer not to have to do this over and over. The whole reason I use the bookmarks (and I have many) is because the targets are spread across many file-shares and often very deep directory paths. It is a royal pain in the *** to have to recreate these bookmarks periodically. Is there no understanding as to why these bookmarks lose their targets in the first place?

Posted by
fullflight
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Thank you so much this worked perfectly!! For me the problem was that desktop showed up on both my iCloud Drive sidebar tab and my 'Favourites' tab so doing this helped my laptop fix itself lol.

Posted by
Penny_Phiri
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