TextEdit Error Message

What document in what folder?

Do a manual save to your Documents folder and autosave should save there from now on. If it's a new document it may be trying to autosave in some temp directory that you do not have permissions for.

A permissions repair might be in order as well.

There aren't many, but there are folders that even an administrator doesn't have permission to enter. If you go on an expedition through your System folders, you'll find a few.

If you're curious, this should work:

Do a Get Info on a blocked folder.
Click the lock icon in the lower right corner. It will ask you for your password.
Once unlocked, set the permissions for "everyone" to Read Only.

mt

No. TextEdit's auto-save behavior works like this:

If you open a document, the auto-saved copy goes into the same folder as the original document. If you create a new document, and don't save it for a while, the auto-saved version ends up in a temporary folder. In both cases, the temp file is deleted when the file is saved by you.

In case anyone is still looking for a solution to this problem, try going to home folder > Library and deleting the "Autosave Information" folder, that should fix the problem.

brkirch said:

In case anyone is still looking for a solution to this problem, try going to home folder > Library and deleting the "Autosave Information" folder, that should fix the problem.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I've been having the exact same problem with TextEdit that the original poster described since about the time I upgraded to Snow Leopard from 10.5.8. After opening a new TextEdit document, I'd start getting these periodic error messages until I saved it manually or closed it. It happened again a few minutes ago, which prompted me to Google the error message, and the first link directed me here.

When I just now checked the Autosave Information folder for my "default" user, gordon, I saw that the folder's permissions were set as:

system: Read & Write
everyone: No Access

And its folder icon had the international do-not-enter symbol on it (even though this user has had administrator privileges for the past several weeks). I just checked my standby user's (gordon2) Autosave Information folder, and its permissions are set to

gordon2: Read& Write
staff: Read only
everyone: Read only

I don't know why these are set differently. I don't recall ever manually fiddling with the permissions on these folders.

I added gordon as an additional permissions class with Read & Write permissions to the problem folder. I then opened the folder, and it was empty. A short time later, the autosaved copy of my TextEdit document appeared in the folder, along with a TextEdit plist file. And I haven't seen another error message.

I believe this started about the time of my upgrade to OS X 10.6 from 10.5.8. Macaroni automatically repairs permissions every week, so I doubt a manual repair would have fixed it.

Thanks again for directing my attention to that folder.

-Gordon

brkirch said:

In case anyone is still looking for a solution to this problem, try going to home folder > Library and deleting the "Autosave Information" folder, that should fix the problem.

Click to expand...

This solution worked GREAT. The folder was recreated by TextEdit, and the autosaving worked.

I agree with others that this seems to have been introduced by Snow Leopard.

You learn something new every day! Thanks!!

gballey said:

I added gordon as an additional permissions class with Read & Write permissions to the problem folder. I then opened the folder, and it was empty. A short time later, the autosaved copy of my TextEdit document appeared in the folder, along with a TextEdit plist file. And I haven't seen another error message.

Click to expand...

Yep, I can report the same fix worked for me. Interestingly, my icon for the folder had a little red circle with a dash on it (see attached image). That went away after I added my user name to the permissions. (Repairing permissions had not worked for me either.)

Thanks for the info. I don't use Textedit that much, but this was annoying me when I do.

Laird

Working Around TextEdit Permissions

Using the procedure below I worked around the TextEdit save issue.

(Note:my original files are located in Documents/MyFirstFolder.)

1. In the Documents folder, create a new folder MySecondFolder.
2. Copy all files from MyFirstFolder into MySecondFolder.

3. Using TextEdit, open your file from MySecondFolder.
5. Add text, save the file. Delete text, save the file.
5. Repeat this a few times.

Notice the "document could not be saved" dialog does not appear.