Deleted user and his invisible files

Question

A program I was running (SageTV) went into its Screen Saver mode and started showing still images that I can't locate with the Finder. The path was something like: /Users/User1/Pictures/iPhoto Library/picture.jpg. I discovered that 'User1' was in the 'Deleted User' folder. What I'm trying to do is locate these invisible files, move them to my active account, and delete these unused folders. Is there any Finder setting that would give me access to the deleted user's files? I have administrator privileges on this computer.

Answer 1

Clearly when the other user account was removed the option to also remove his files was not chosen, so his entire user directory is most likely still intact and available.
I believe if you remember the exact account name, you can restore it and easily access all the files/folders.
You might also run
ls -al /users
and see if the account is there with some other user name or perhaps the original name.
If it is User1, then you can access the files from the terminal and move the ones you want somewhere else, preferably a temporary folder to begin with to avoid any permissions issues.
If, on the other hand, the user's files were removed along with his account, that is something else and an admin account may not have sufficient privileges to access the images or other files still on the system.
Lastly, if all else fails, you can activate the root account and access all the files on the computer, but that should be a last resort.