"Save failed because you do not have permission to create a file in that location"

[Dennison]

I have 464 fonts installed - so not likely the issue.  All came with Big Sur.

[Dennison]

Re-opened Designer this morning and voila! - suddenly new files can be saved.

 

That suggests it is definitely an issue with AD - can anyone please explain why Affinity is so reluctant to get to grips with this problem?  

 

Thanks,

Dennison

[CALDesign]

On 7/14/2021 at 11:54 AM, Dennison said:

Re-opened Designer this morning and voila! - suddenly new files can be saved.

 

That suggests it is definitely an issue with AD - can anyone please explain why Affinity is so reluctant to get to grips with this problem?  

 

Thanks,

Dennison

So sorry you are having the same problem as me and many others, Dennison. For me this has been going on for well over a year and there's been no solution. I think it's only out of a sense of (misplaced?) loyalty that I haven't asked for my money back on the grounds that the apps supplied were "not of merchantable quality". I've been using  computers and software since the late 1980s and these are the only apps that ABSOLUTELY DO NOT WORK for me. After all, the barest minimum that you require is that you can open a file and close it, saved. The fact that nothing has been done about this suggests that: (1) they don't read our feedback on these pages; or (2) they have no solution; or (3) they don't care... Sad...

[Dennison]

Thanks for your comments.  It is really disappointing to see a company with great software fail to understand one of the basics of longterm success - respect your existing fan base!  No point wasting money on marketing for new customers if the existing customers are abandoned.  The best advertising is word of mouth by a loyal fan base. I have recommended Affinity products to many people - but no more.  I'm honour bound now to caution people.

It's not that there's a problem - we know problems happen, sometimes things don't work. The question is always how do businesses respond to the problem.  Affinity has reacted by saying it's not their problem that their software does not work for some users!  A more productive response would be to be pro-active - accept that there is a problem for those users and find workarounds.  Affinity has been advertising 50% off their products - yet they have yet to offer people with software that does not work a replacement copy that can be downloaded free. 

I create and sell digital products online and - yes - sometimes things don't work as they should and I get irate emails from customers. I engage with them immediately because:

1) they are showing me enormous respect and loyalty by even writing to me, when they could have just walked away in disgust

2) they have written because they are disappointed and still want the product to work

3) something has not worked and here is MY opportunity to make improvements

4) making something right by the customer (free copy, refund, online help etc.) probably isn't going to cost me much out of pocket

5) treating irate customers with total respect usually ends with MORE loyalty and an enhanced reputation

6) money invested in customer service comes out of the advertising budget

6) brand ambassadors, influencers, word of mouth (call it what you want) are worth 10x to a business than advertising

[Dave Tuck]

Also having this problem, can't save with permission error.  Only have a small number of fonts installed so it's not that that is causing the problem. Been having this problem for a while and only happens after editing 3 or four photos then no save.  Come on Affinity, help us out!

[CALDesign]

3 hours ago, Dave Tuck said:

Also having this problem, can't save with permission error.  Only have a small number of fonts installed so it's not that that is causing the problem. Been having this problem for a while and only happens after editing 3 or four photos then no save.  Come on Affinity, help us out!

Dave - Sorry you too are having this problem. I've had to give up on the Affinity suite (very sadly) because I have to work to earn my living even if Serif's Affinity products DON'T. There has been no response from Serif to my frequent posts and it's clear others are finding the same. How tragic that they set up this Forum but that they either don't read read what we write or just don't care that they've sold us products that don't work. If anyone has any personal contacts with anyone at Serif, perhaps they could ask them why this is... Bon courage, Dave, as we say here in France...

[Dennison]

I agree with both CalDesign and Dave Tuck.  

Hopefully we will get a solution in the next update, though it is disappointing that no-one seems at Serif seems to take this seriously.

[GarryP]

13 hours ago, CALDesign said:

There has been no response from Serif to my frequent posts

As far as I can tell you have created two threads and posted comments to a third.
The two threads you created were very similar requests – within a month of each other, almost three years ago – for an alternative to Lightroom.
Serif generally don’t comment on feature requests or new product requests, especially ones which have already been requested many times by other people.
And at least one of the posts you have posted in this thread has had a reply from a moderator (to which you replied).
So what’s the problem here?

[Vickski]

Hi all,

I ran in the same issue today, after a few hours of work I could not save any of my files.
I'm running Big Sur 11.5.2 (20G95), I can't see a relation with fonts.
As it seemed to be a permission issue I could solve it  - the cure is pretty simple, but there is a 'bit of a stunt - or a big leap of faith.

Here's what I did:

1 - First thing is to try saving your work alternatively:

a) If you have a chance, copy/paste your work to another program, vector designs and SVG will stick fine in Adobe Illustrator.

b) If you don't have that luxury, copy your whole work, it should remain in cache (on top of the ability to restore your work that Affinity Designer offers) ... the Mac's Universal Clipboard is pretty solid, anyway, keep your fingers crossed.

2 - Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access

3 - Add Affinity Designer to the list (Click the + navigate to the Application Folder and select "Affinity Designer.app"

4 - There will be an annoying modal dialog box that will righteously scare you. Before you click anything: the "good" news is that crashing Affinity Designed will let you restore it afterwards and everything should come back - but don't quote me, full disclaimer here, it worked for me, I can't guarantee it will for you... However: click on "Later"

5 - Now the crazy part, go crash Affinity Designer (to let the restore dialog pop up once you reopen: Open the  Menu > Force Quit... and select Affinity Designer

6 - Reopen Affinity Designer and click "Restore" once the pop up appears. You should be fine by now. And the issue is gone for good.

 

[PeterSvancar]

I have same issue with affinity photo. Random files in same folder getting these no access privileges errors

[Dennison]

Thank you Vickski.  This will be great.  Fingers crossed that the issue does not pop up again.

[Vickski]

Happy if this helps @Dennison ... Also I believe it is related to a Mac OS update that has wiped the folder access for the app.
Something the devs should be able to debug I believe. 

Note to self: Check it out right after the next security update/patch in Mac OS, and especially soon with Monterrey coming up 

[CALDesign]

Vickski - Thank you very much for this… good of you to share it. After the very rude response I had from GaryP (whoever he may be!), this is encouraging! I’ll pour myself a brandy and soda this evening and try your ‘solution’ with fingers crossed! Best - C [Dennison, please report how you get on...!]

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, CALDesign said:

After the very rude response I had from GaryP (whoever he may be!), this is encouraging!

What was rude about the response from Garry (two Rs rather than one, by the way)? You had asserted, counterfactually,

On 8/23/2021 at 11:11 PM, CALDesign said:

There has been no response from Serif to my frequent posts

so Garry pointed out that

On 8/24/2021 at 12:59 PM, GarryP said:

at least one of the posts you have posted in this thread has had a reply from a moderator (to which you replied).

He followed up with this perfectly polite question:

On 8/24/2021 at 12:59 PM, GarryP said:

So what’s the problem here?

So what, indeed, is the problem?

[Dennison]

CALDesign - so far so good, but it was only an intermittent problem.

[Dave Tuck]

On 8/31/2021 at 8:49 AM, Vickski said:

Hi all,

I ran in the same issue today, after a few hours of work I could not save any of my files.
I'm running Big Sur 11.5.2 (20G95), I can't see a relation with fonts.
As it seemed to be a permission issue I could solve it  - the cure is pretty simple, but there is a 'bit of a stunt - or a big leap of faith.

Here's what I did:

1 - First thing is to try saving your work alternatively:

a) If you have a chance, copy/paste your work to another program, vector designs and SVG will stick fine in Adobe Illustrator.

b) If you don't have that luxury, copy your whole work, it should remain in cache (on top of the ability to restore your work that Affinity Designer offers) ... the Mac's Universal Clipboard is pretty solid, anyway, keep your fingers crossed.

2 - Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access

3 - Add Affinity Designer to the list (Click the + navigate to the Application Folder and select "Affinity Designer.app"

4 - There will be an annoying modal dialog box that will righteously scare you. Before you click anything: the "good" news is that crashing Affinity Designed will let you restore it afterwards and everything should come back - but don't quote me, full disclaimer here, it worked for me, I can't guarantee it will for you... However: click on "Later"

5 - Now the crazy part, go crash Affinity Designer (to let the restore dialog pop up once you reopen: Open the  Menu > Force Quit... and select Affinity Designer

6 - Reopen Affinity Designer and click "Restore" once the pop up appears. You should be fine by now. And the issue is gone for good.

 

Thanks for this, great idea.  I get the error (have very few fonts installed so not that) after 3/4 saves so tried your solution.  It has extended the number of saves I get before the crash, now getting 5-8 saves before it givers up the ghost.  Am going to start emailing the support team if I can find an address if not will rewrite my 5 star review and see if that gets a response.

[Dennison]

Yes, I have followed the same path - thanks for the suggestions - adding AD to Full Disk Access - and have not had a problem in the past 2 weeks.

Fingers crossed.

Thanks,

Dennison

[Vickski]

Following up: I got the problem once again, trying to export a file.

It was this time related to the fact that I had opened the file from Publisher (using the Persona feature)...

I fixed it by saving in Publisher, Closing Publisher, Closing Designer, re-opening the file in Designer.

On a side note: the previous occurence of this bug was not related to the above, as I did not have Publisher installed at the time, FWIW.

So it's the same symptom, but the cause is different

However, seriously it's a bug - a pretty nasty one. 

If Affinity is monitoring this they should investigate and fix this ASAP, if anyone knows is a better way to pass it on to their dev team just let me know.

[Dennison]

Good work around - thanks for posting.

Yes, it's a nasty bug that needs solving!

[CALDesign]

On 7/14/2021 at 10:19 AM, Dennison said:

Having exactly the same issue after switching to new Macbook Pro with Big Sur.

Difficult to understand why Affinity will not simply allow registered buyers/users to download a fresh copy from their website. As others have stated, this is a HUGE step back for the company. Not much point developing great software if you can't save a file and loyal users are being cast adrift by the company.

 

I've been a big fan and encouraged many people to buy the software - but, alas, no more. More than one year and the problem has been allowed to fester. If a user cannot use your product - for whatever reason - then I suggest it's your problem too. Which bit of a user/customer not being able to use the product does Affinity not understand?

Hi, Dennison - I could not agree more with what you say. I've now ditched the whole Affinity suite and am warning people about what I've experienced. But I'm still registered on the this Forum so have been kept aware of the frustration this 'bug' is causing to others. They clearly don't care at all because last year I was in frequent contact with Gareth at Affinity development who admitted the issue was affecting a lot of people. He claimed it was Apple's fault and a problem caused by Apple's permissions régime and sandboxing. But I have never heard of any other software developer being affected this way - so I now don't believe him. Since then no one from the company has, to my knowledge, ever acknowledged that they are selling goods of "un-merchantable quality", nor that we deserve at least a refund. It's really pretty disgraceful - they should be ashamed of themselves.

[CALDesign]

5 hours ago, Dennison said:

Good work around - thanks for posting.

Yes, it's a nasty bug that needs solving!

Hi, Dennison - I could not agree more with what you say. I've now ditched the whole Affinity suite and am warning people about what I've experienced. But I'm still registered on the this Forum so have been kept aware of the frustration this 'bug' is causing to others. They clearly don't care at all because last year I was in frequent contact with Gareth at Affinity development who admitted the issue was affecting a lot of people. He claimed it was Apple's fault and a problem caused by Apple's permissions régime and sandboxing. But I have never heard of any other software developer being affected this way - so I now don't believe him. Since then no one from the company has, to my knowledge, ever acknowledged that they are selling goods of "un-merchantable quality", nor that we deserve at least a refund. It's really pretty disgraceful - they should be ashamed of themselves.

[Vickski]

On 9/30/2021 at 1:53 AM, CALDesign said:

 I've now ditched the whole Affinity suite and am warning people about what I've experienced. But I'm still registered on the this Forum so have been kept aware of the frustration this 'bug' is causing to others. They clearly don't care [...]

I brought up the issue on twitter to try to obtain a fix, to no avail.

Just like you @CALDesign, I can't use Affinity Software anymore either, I can't afford the stress of guessing if I will be able to deliver a project because of a software bug the developer refuses to acknowledge and fix.

It is almost comical that Affinity claims it is an issue with the Apple Mac App Store, just like if they were the only developer delivering their app through this channel that has to deal with fonts 🤦‍♂️

And even if the Mac App Store was to blame, how easy would it be to let users encountering this issue get a direct download ands install the software manually... this is what lost me here, Affinity just does not care and blame/punish their own customers.

It is sad, but I am since yesterday back to Illustrator.

[David Tee]

I've just come across this issue.

I'd loaded the .afdesign of an image I wanted to change and overwrite.  I switched to Finder and by mistake I deleted the .afdesign file and not the .png of the same file (I needed to delete the png to be able to sync properly with an IOS app).   When I tried to save the overwritten .afdesign file, it wouldn't let me, showing the notice that "Save failed because you do not have permission to create a file in that location."  

I checked all the permissions and they were fine.  Wondered what to do next (save elsewhere and reboot?) and then thought I'd put back the deleted file in my bin - and sure enough once I'd done that I was then able to overwrite the file with no problems.

Basically, I'd used Finder to delete a file that was already open in Affinity.  It let me do it with no warning.  When I tried to overwrite the file, presumably Affinity recognised it was in the bin and wasn't able to overwrite it there.