Spreadsheets won't open

I've updated the iPad but have now found that the this is not the problem. I've had two instances where the iPad has not been involved. Downloaded a PDF copy of a manual for an old PC I'm trying to convert to Linux, and tried to move it from Preview to my 'PDFs' folder and got the message again as below.

I tried several other folders in my Documents and got the same message. It was almost as if my Documents folder was locked for 'write' access. I tried saving to my Desktop and got the same message again. I did manage to save to my MS OneDrive but couldn't move the file from OneDrive to the 'PDFs' folder. I got no message from MacOS for trying this move - it just didn't move over. Rebooted - problem went away and I was able to move the PDF PC manual from OneDrive to 'PDFs'.

The second was today where I scanned a couple of documents as PDFs to the same directory only to find that I couldn't open them in Preview, receiving a similar message as shown in the attached screen capture above. I went to Finder and had a go opening a couple of other documents only to get the same message. Firstly I selected a PDF. This displayed in the preview window to the right of the file list but up popped the same dialog but with the name of the selected file. I double clicked a JPEG that just happened to be in the folder and Affinity Photo opened up OK. I made an arbitrary adjustment to the image and saved back to the PDF folder without any problems. What's more I could open the new JPEG again without any problems in Affinity. However if I tried opening the JPEG with Preview I got the error message again although Finder was happy to display the image. I've also tried moving files from the PDFs folder to another folder and they fail to move although the iMac makes the 'copied' sound. Is this some sort of file locking problem (possibly at kernel level???) that Affinity is able to ignore? Don't know, just a thought.

I've been doing a little digging around the system. At the moment I can't copy and paste files between directories and get the following error :

I can't open files using Apple apps such as preview although Finder displays file contents in its preview section as I get the following

and I can't save files to some directories/folders. I use QGIS for handling geospatial information - my QGIS files open OK and I can save back to the directories. My JPEGS open automatically in Affinity Photo and I can save edits to folders Finder can't access.

I decided to have a look at my Documents from a terminal and saw a message about using bash and that Catalina has been set to use zsh by default, recommending a change of current users to the new shell. Am I getting warm? Is the change of shell type affecting the security and locking files and folders if the user's shell is 'bash'?

NC

I have the same problem. None of my spreadsheets will open on my iPad. They work fine on my iPhone and iMac. It says to try to restore from backup, but NONE of my spreadsheet can open on the iPad, so I doubt it is a fake corruption issue. Appears to be a problem with a recent iOS or Numbers update.

I've had the same problem since loading Catalina. Yes - a restart solves the problem but it's a very "MS Windows" thing to do and not what I expect of Apple's MacOS. Catalina has upped the security from Mojave and I suspect it's a new security feature that needs a bit of TLC to be issued as a fix in the next update. Just for info I did have the spreadsheet open on my iPad Pro and the file's on iCloud so maybe it's a share problem? Just a thought. Closing the sheet on the iPad and logging back into the iMac didn't solve the problem. Looked at the iPad's share options but nothing fits the problem and ditto for MacOS Catalina. In the meantime the "Windows" solution will have to suffice when the problem reoccurs.

NC

Thanks for getting back to me. Much appreciated. When I experienced the problem yesterday I was not up to date. I've since updated the iPad and repeated the process of having the spreadsheet open on the iPad and then trying to open it on the Mac. The problem's not reoccurred. I've actually got the spreadsheet open on both the iPad and the Mac now and all's well. I'll monitor it for the next couple of weeks and see how I get on and post here when I've tried it a few times now the iPad's on 13.2.3. If it happens again I'll, hopefully, have a clearer set of diagnostic info. Thanks again for responding.

NC

Have you tried restarting your Mac?

SG

In iPadOS, iOS have you updated to 13.2.3?

SG