Do I have a corrupt file system?

[gw1500se]

This is a very odd recurring problem that frustrates the hell out of a user. This user has a file that displays in finder. When the user tries to open the file it disappears from the finder window (does not open). If the user clicks on a different finder window or desktop it returns. This is a file that was saved from Excel (Office 2008) and appears to only happen with saved Excel files. I decided to look at it using terminal and it got even more strange. First is the output from ‘ls’ (the file in question is ‘untitled.xls’):
[quote]
dhcp-102: Desktop username$ ls
Amortization Table.xls To Be Input
IRR_Calculator.xls UL Grid (also for AIM)1.xls
Kaye_10mm_GSUL6.pdf ricer.doc
Kaye_10mm_GSUL6_WS.pdf untitled.xls
[/quote]
I then tried doing an ‘ls -l’ on that directory and ‘untitled.xls’ did not show up. So I tried to remove the file:
[quote]
dhcp-102: Desktop username$ rm untitled.xls
rm: untitled.xls: No such file or directory
[/quote]
Finally, I tried to ‘save as’ from Excel and that seemed to fix the problem. Regardless of the fact that it is only Excel that does this, it makes no sense from a Unix file system standpoint. How can any application create a file that behaves that way? I can only think there is some kind of corruption in the file system. Unfortunately, this is an OD mounted home directory that resides on a RAID array. Off hours I did an fsck-hs (it takes about an hour) on that array and it found nothing wrong. Does anyone have any ideas? TIA.

[guitar24t]

If this happens again, try [code]ls -a[/code] to list all the files in that directory.
If the file shows up, download [url]http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/developer/hiddenfiles.html[/url]
and view hidden files.
Now try to remove it with [code]rm -Rf untitled.xls[/code]
Believe it or not, the terminal pays attention to hidden files and will not let you change them with normal commands unless you enable hidden file view (at least in my experience).

I am wondering if this file has anything to do with auto save on the office products?
It may also be some kind of default file?

If the problem keeps occurring, try an Office reinstall as admin?

If this doesn’t work, try repairing the permissions and verifying the disk in disk utility. If you have errors, you will need a boot cd to repair them (for the disk).
I have had weird problems with UNIX before though.
Good Luck,
Robert

[Author]

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