Today after saving my project a couple of times I noticed some strange folders appearing in the same directory as the project. they contain a few folders and a JSON file.
This is what the naming looks like - GB24-BOX-2024-08-21.elements.sb-98abef50-pDd1Mk
What are these folders?
Can I delete them, or are they essential? I have never seen them before today.
Hey @handshaper,
Are you by any chance saving to a google drive or dropbox?
These are temporary files created during the save process. They are written first to ensure the save process is successful, and then moved to the original document location.
The problem occurs if another process like google drive tries to sync these files, it prevents the system from removing them after the document has been saved.
You should be safe to remove them.
I was not saving to anywhere except the normal location on my internal hard drive.
The one thing that did change when this started happening is that I started testing on Sequoia, could that be the problem.
I just tested this again today and the same thing happened.
It shouldn’t be, but maybe, Sequoia is still in beta…
Do you have iCloud sync turned on?
Yes, I have iCloud Sync turned on, but that has been the case throughout the BETA test period.
I walked back when this first started happening, and it was actually before I upgraded to Sequoia. This means it was doing it on Sonoma.
It does it on every save, and each folder has around 9MB of stuff.
It could well be iCloud causing the issue. Do you have any other software running that could be locking files? Things like virus / malware detection, backup software, or a NAS drive?
You could try creating a new user account on your Mac, without logging into iCloud and see if the problem still occurs. It should help to narrow things down.
I have BitDefender virus protection software running, but I am not using a NAS drive.
I checked to ensure that Elements was listed as an approved app and then tried to do a save again. But it still created the folder.
I’ll install Elements on my MacBook Air and see if the same problem shows on there as it is still running Sonoma.
I tested this out on my MacBook Air and there are no problems on it running Sonoma. I’ll upgrade it to Sequoia later today to see if the problem resurfaces.
I have done much more testing on this problem, and it seems to be tied to this one particular project. I have created a couple of test projects, and they do not exhibit this problem. The project that shows this behavior is one that Dan has had to resurrect for me a couple of times as it was being corrupted when saved.
OK, a new BETA version of Sequoia just came out, and I upgraded to that, and now the problem appears to have disappeared, yippee!
Thanks for tracking this down and reporting your findings, fingers crossed it was an OS issue and has now been fixed!
Keep an eye on it and let us know if it happens again.
Cheers
Unfortunately, these folders have started appearing again. Not sure why it worked for awhile and now is back.
Could it have anything to do with permissions?
Probably not much help but as an FYI I’m not seeing any issues like this - but have been watching for it.
I have all my Elements files in a folder on my Desktop which is stored on the cloud (Shared Desktop and Documents folders). I’m on Sonoma.
I have seen strange folders appear when doing very large transfers to iCloud - but these were in the hundreds of GBs.
My files are a local on my hard drive so nothing going to iCloud.
I am running Sequoia but this problem existed before I switched.
I think there is something wrong with the file myself as this problem does not exist with other projects.
But until there is a means to copy and paste stuff out of one file into another I’m stuck with this file as there is a lot work gone into it.
Hi @handshaper
The strange extension sb-98abef50-pDd1Mk, appears to be related to a macOS sandboxing issue. From the research we’ve done, this appears to be an issue with the Mac misbehaving and not an Elements issue.
When googling, I found many other reports of this happening with all kinds of document based Mac apps.
The strange file extension “.sb-98abef50-pDd1M” on your Mac documents could be related to sandboxing, a security mechanism used by macOS to isolate applications and their processes. These extensions are sometimes used by the system to manage temporary or sandboxed files. Such files might appear if an application is creating temporary files or if there is an issue with file handling by certain applications.
Here’s a couple of things to try…
You could try opening the file in Elements, then using the “Save As…” command in the File menu and saving it to your documents folder rather than the desktop. Delete the original document when this is done.
I’d also recommend running Disk First Aid on your Mac, you can find this in the toolbar of the Disk Utility app. After you’ve run that restart your Mac.
Let me know if any of that helps.
Yes, that is exactly what I did, and it worked just fine for a while. But then, the folders reappeared the next day. I still have to go through the First Aid process, which will require booting from another volume.