Over the years here, I have had more than my share of “quirks” with my various computers: font corruption, Mail issues, black magic-type things I can’t explain, etc. Even as I’ve upgraded my workstations, some of the oddities and flat-out problems continued. My theory is that much of it stems from the fact that my first MacBook Pro’s hard drive failed, and thus, corrupted some of the data in the process, so when I migrated my data from a backup each time, I was bringing the baggage with me.
This Mac Treat is not about the virtues of starting “clean” with each new computer, or even tips that you can use to keep your data fresh and problem-free when migrating — that’s for another time (but I’ll get to it…). I’ve discovered a tip that has come in very handy when moving my data, and the following is a good thing to keep in mind if you’re dealing with file permissions.
You can see what any file’s permissions are by clicking Command-I. In my case, I needed to change the permissions of an entire folder (i.e. all of the enclosed items).
Here’s how you change more than one at a time:
- Get Info on the file you need to change
- Click the ‘lock’ icon in the lower right section of the window (Note: You will need to be an admin or know the admin’s password to have access)
- Click on the Name of the user or group that needs different permissions
- Change the Privilege to what you want
- Click the Gear icon and select “Apply to enclosed items…”
I used this to give multiple users permission to use the fonts installed on my system — helpful because my font folder included over 200 subfolders that I’d have to change one-by-one otherwise!
Have you tried this before or have a question about another scenario where this would be useful? Email me!
Note: Back in Kibbles & Bytes issue #843, I wrote about the many uses of the Option key, so take a look at that list if you’d like to see what other hidden gems the Option key unlocks!