Admin is not an admin?

Question

Ok... here is an irritation of mine. Why is it that an account with Admin authority does not have access to all the folders to other users (managed or other admins)? I got separate accounts for my kids and I cannot access their file folders without logging in under their accounts. Worse still to manage safari under parental controls, I have to undo the parental controls just to edit or inspect stuff easily.
I am also looking at backing stuff up and I suspect, I will have to go through all this login logoutu undoing controls hassle again just to do it.
Would it be more helpful to enable root? What can be done to make the Admin account more properly admin authoritative?

Answer 1

Here's what I'd do to access your kids' stuff:
Go the Users folder, select one of your
children's folders, and Get Info on it
Expand
the Ownership and Permissions disclosure triangle as
well as the details triangle and unlock the small
lock icon
Temporarily change "Owner" to
yourself.
Set "Group" to "admin" and change
its access to "Read & Write"
Reset "Owner" to
your child and relock the lock
Hit "Apply to
enclosed items…"
That won't work. The "Apply to enclosed items" button only works on files and folders that are owned by the currently logged in user. Since the OP is logged in from a different account he'll need to use Terminal.
Assuming the kid's account short user name is "charlie", enter the following:
sudo chgrp -R admin ~charlie
sudo chmod -R g+rwX ~charlie
A utility like BatChmod will also do the job. But Finder won't.