Step 2: Right-click the item (or Control + click) and choose “Copy (filename)” from the drop-down menu. Now, locate the item you wish to move to a new location. Step 1: Open a new window by clicking the Finder icon in the Dock, or hit the ⌘-Shift-F combo with the Finder active. To make a copy of a file or folder in a new location while preserving ownership and permissions of the original item, follow the steps outlined below. How to copy a file while preserving ownerships and permissions To copy, move or duplicate a file without the current user becoming the new owner, use either the Finder’s Paste Item Exactly or Duplicate Exactly feature. In my experience, preserving the original permissions can help maintain the file system integrity and consistency and save you trouble down the road. The following tips will teach you how to leverage them to ensure that the file’s ownership information and permission data has been kept intact after the copy/move operation.Īgain, Finder defaults to changing the original ownership and permissions to your account, if the file being copied or moved is owned by another user. In these kinds of scenarios, preserving the original file’s ownership and permissions can save you headache down the road.īut worry not - the Mac’s Finder includes a pair of hidden features, Paste Item Exactly and Duplicate Exactly, that get the job done. Hence, the default behavior of changing ownership/permissions is actually desirable for most users, in most cases.īut on occasion, you may need to override the default setting when, say, copying a file into another user’s folder, dropping a document into the Guest account and so forth. In most circumstances, that’s not a problem as you’ll be moving stuff within your own user account. Many Mac users are unaware that copying a file or folder in the Finder, or moving it to another location, does not preserve the permissions and ownership data attached to it.

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