Normally, files deleted from your Mac systems get stored in the Trash, from where it can easily be accessed and restored if necessary. However, in some cases, you may find that the trashed files get deleted immediately allowing no scope for you to access the file from Trash.
This issue usually occurs due to lack of reading/write permissions or if your account’s Trash has been deleted. Or it can also happen if you are no longer the owner of the account’s Trash folder. In order to solve this problem and allow you to add files to your Trash, we provide some helpful solutions in this article. Please follow along.
Solution 1: Make sure you have read/write permissions
Having appropriate read/write permissions for your account’s Trash folder is necessary to be able to add files to Trash. So first let’s check if you have that feature enabled.
- Open Finder and click on Command + Shift + H keys
- In the contents of the home folder that opens, press the Command + I keys to open the Info window
- Select the Info window and open the Sharing & Permissions panel
- If your account is not listed under ‘Name’ or you do not have Privilege for ‘Read and Write’, please set yourself these permissions
- Then log back in and check if the issue is resolved. If not, please proceed to the next step.
Solution 2: Verify that your Trash folder actually exists
You will have trouble adding files to your Trash if your Trash folder is deleted. Yes it can happen; trash folders can get deleted due to various reasons. To see if that’s the problem, let’s check using the following steps.
- Open the Applications folder and select Utilities folder
- Then open Terminal and type the following command
‘ls ~/.Trash’
- Hit Return and if you see a message ‘No such file or directory’, restart your system
- Then log in again and see if you are able to delete files and see them in your Trash
- If not, you will have to create a new Trash folder as explained in the next step
Solution 3: Create a new Trash folder
This solution involves emptying the contents of your old Trash and creating a new one with the right ownership and permissions. To do this, follow the steps below
- Click on the Applications folder and select Utilities
- Then click on Terminal to open it
- In the command prompt, type the respective commands for the accounts you have
For admin accounts: ‘sudo rm –ri ~/.Trash’ and hit Return
User account: ‘sudo rm –ri /Users/your_user_name/.Trash’ and hit Return (Please replace your_user_name with the actual username)
- Enter the admin password if it’s the admin account
- You will be prompted to remove each file in the Trash folder and also the Trash folder. Click Yes and hit Return for each prompt that you receive
- Now, log out of your account and log in again
You should now be able to delete files and see them as they appear in your new Trash folder. We hope one of these solutions help you resolve the error.
However, in cases when you have experienced deletion of important files and they don’t appear in your Trash, you may want to make use of data recovery tools. Hi5 Software’s file recovery tool is a great choice to recover files that are deleted permanently or files deleted from Trash. It has the ability to recover all kinds of files like Word documents, Excel files, notes etc. It works with all versions of Mac OS including High Sierra. Download a trial and try for free today!
