New computer + manual transfer of files = permissions mess!

Question

Hello everyone,
Bear with me, my situation is lengthy to explain, possibly because I don't have the right words to describe it.
I've got a difficult situation I can't figure out. Let me start by saying, I don't know the Terminal very well, as I suspect that fixing my problem will definitely involve the Terminal.  I know just enough to be dangerous (or to copy and paste!)
I had an old laptop running 10.6, and have a new laptop now running 10.8.4.  Rather than use the Migration Assistant, I felt I wanted a clean start, a new user profile, etc, so I started from scratch.  I should add that the new laptop has two internal drives, one that houses the OS, the other that is meant to store my (user generated) files.  Also, for abbreviations' sake-- old computer, my username was called OldUser, and new computer my username is now NewUser.
I moved thousands of files on to my new computer's file storage volume (called "Data"), only to discover that any file I open, when I try to save, says this:
The document “example.rtf” could not be saved. The file is locked. Do you want to save your changes to it anyway? [Save Anyway] [Cancel]
There's also an accompanying tool tip that shows up next to the file's name (at the top of the open document) that says:
The document could not be autosaved.  You don't have permission.
It doesn't matter what kind of document I open up, they all say this same thing.
All these troubled files reside here:  /Volumes/Data/Old laptop files/Desktop.  Files that are NOT in this directory, but are elsewher in the same volume "Data" behave just fine, (and no, just by adding a new file into the Old Laptop Files/Desktop directory doesn't "corrupt" it at this point.)
I have looked at the permissions of some of these troubled files, (File > Get Info) and discovered something I hadn't seen before.  It looks like this:
everyone:    Custom
NewUser:     Read & Write
admin:       Read & Write
everyone:    Read & Write
The reason I say "I'd never seen it before" is because instead of the usual three categories, Owner/group/other, there's that fourth one at the top that says "custom."
The rest of the permissions, I set to "Read/Write" by recursively using the chmod command to set the file permissions to 777.  (This is one command line trick I do know).  But it didn't work!
At this point, I'm really stuck, because I lack the file permissions/command line vocabularly to even be able to google my question!  Help?!
Thanks in advance for any tips/help!

Answer 1

Back up all data. Don't continue unless you're sure you can restore from a backup, even if you're unable to log in.
This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership and access-control lists to the default. If you've set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it.
Step 1
If you have more than one user account, and the one in question is not an administrator account, then temporarily promote it to administrator status in the Users & Groups preference pane. To do that, unlock the preference pane using the credentials of an administrator, check the box marked Allow user to administer this computer, then reboot. You can demote the problem account back to standard status when this step has been completed.
Triple-click the following line on this page to select it. Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):
{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password. Nothing will be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The command will take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear, then quit Terminal.
Step 2 (optional)
Take this step only if you have trouble with Step 1 or if it doesn't solve the problem.
Boot into Recovery. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select
Utilities ▹ Terminal
from the menu bar. A Terminal window will open.
In the Terminal window, type this:
res
Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:
resetpassword
Press return. A Reset Password window will open. You’re not  going to reset a password.
Select your boot volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.
Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.
Select
 ▹ Restart
from the menu bar.