I love Mac OS X, but every once in a while I manage to screw up one (or more) of the network folders I dropped into the sidebar. (On this particular occasion I changed my mind after I started opening a network folder and clicked “Cancel” on the keychain access prompt.) Now every time I click on the network folder in the sidebar of Finder I’m getting the following message: The volume for “network-folder-name” cannot be found.
I’ve had this happen before, but I can never remember how to fix it. A quick search turned up this thread which suggests blasting the entire com.apple.sidebarlists.plist file, but that’s a bit harsh if you have a dozen folders in the sidebar and only one or two of them are broken! Instead I chose to edit the plist file and delete the broken folders.
Double-clicking on ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist should open the Property List Editor. (If it doesn’t, see “to Diana” comment on this post.) Click on the exposure triangles for Root, useritems, and CustomListItems. Find the broken folder–they’re in the same order that they appear in the Sidebar. You can click the exposure triangle for a numbered item and see if the Name property matches your broken folder. Once you’ve selected the correction Dictionary item, click the Delete button:
Now if you open a new Finder window you’ll notice… That you still have the same problem. Doh! You need to restart Finder. Click on the “Apple” menu (top left of the screen) and choose “Force Quit…” (or just hit Apple-Option-Escape on the keyboard). Select the Finder application and hit the Relaunch button.
This doesn’t really fix the problem–the broken folder is gone, not repaired. But it’s better (imo) than whacking the entire Sidebar preferences file.
I’m glade to see that I’m not the only one with this problem!
Great instructions. At first I wasn’t quite sure where to find the com.apple.sidebarlists.plist file, but I tried looking for “sidebarlists” with Spotlight and found it right away. Thanks!
Glad it was able to help you! That’s one of the reasons I wrote it up. (The other reason was so that I’d be able to fix this problem again next time it happens to me!)
I have a few items that are stuck to the sidebar, but I can’t seem to delete them. I opened the com.apple.sidebarlists.plist in OmniOutliner, but don’t see any of the items there…Actually, I don’t see anything there (Desktop, Applications, etc) Any ideas how to remove them? Thanks.
“THE VOLUME NETWORK COULD NOT BE FOUND”
After trouble shooting and searching the web for a fix to no avail. Try this easy fix, It WORKED for me.
RESET PRAM
1 REMOVE BATTERY & DISCONNECT ALL PERIPHERALS
2 POWER UP WHILE FOLLOWING STEP #3
3 HOLD DOWN “OPTION,OPEN APPLE, “R” & ‘P” KEYS UNTIL 2 SD CHIME
Why have all this hassle - just drag the item off the side bar and “zap” it’s gone!!
or am I being too simple??
(to Don): That’s how it’s supposed to work, but if you fubar the network connection (as I did) then the item doesn’t respond to dragging anymore–as soon as you mouse-down on the item it displays the “volume not found” error.
(to Diana): Don’t open it with OmniOutliner, use Property List Editor. If OmniOutliner is opening when you double-click on the sidebarlists.plist, control-click (or right-click) the file and select “Open With” from the context menu. Then select the Property List Editor as the application to open the file.
(to Alan): Are there any negative side effects to resetting PRAM? Also, does that fix the network folder(s) or trash them? Sounds like quite a finger-stretching exercise!
(Apple key, Option, “R”, “P”, and the power button simultaneously?!?)
i can’t find the property list editor. it’s not under utilities in applications…
Ah, I think I know the problem… I’ve installed Apple’s Xcode toolkit, which includes the Property List Editor. Once Xcode is installed, the Property List Editor should be available as: (OSX disk)/Developer/Applications/Utilities/Property List Editor
Xcode is a pretty big download, but there’s tons of useful stuff for Mac hackers in there. Only available to “registered developers”, but registration is free.
Thanks Jim. Is there a way to get rid of it without that? I tried copying one over from a computer that had nothing but the default on it, but that didn’t seem to work.
Diana, you can blast the whole plist. Go to your Library/Preferences directory and drag com.apple.sidebarlists.plist to the trash. I haven’t tried Alan’s suggesstion (reseting PRAM), but that may work also.
i accidently removed my network button from my sidebar. now when i cant get it back on? i can go to “go” then “network” but nothing shows up. can you help?
Force quit my finder worked great. Thanks a lot!
If you click on the Finder menu — or type Command-comma while you are in the Finder — select Preferences, then click on Sidebar. This will show you a list of options for what to display on the sidebar. If Network is one of the options, click on its checkbox. If Network is not there, then I am out of my depth and somebody else will have to give you the answer.
Lancelot Fletcher
i typed then unchecked ‘network’ then re-checked it, and the ‘volume cannot be found’ problem seemed to go away immediately… but maybe my cause wasn’t the same as some others’ here…
whoops: should have read “i typed cmd-, then unchecked..” — but was read and disappeared as a tag because i bracketed it with less-than and greater-than signs…
I tried command-comma, went to sidebar, de-selected ‘network’ then re-selected it and presto - it works.
This worked great for me. Thanks a lot. Coincidence that I had just downloaded Xcode for the first time yesterday. I tried opening the plist before installing xcode, and I too was looking at it in OmniOutliner thinking… how is this suposed to GTD my broken sidebar link???
Baby-hacker.
Thanks for the how-to.
Another thanks from sunny Florida - new Mac Pro, had my network connection working, then suddenly (shortly after installing Xcode), I was getting the “Volume not found” error. Editing the plist worked perfectly!
I might be misunderstanding what you guys are talking about, but if you have a volume on the side of your finder window that has a broken like, just drag the volume to your desktop, and poof, the file explodes in Mac Dust.
uhh, there seems to be a much easier way…. just open finder and go to Finder/Preferences un-check and re-check the Network (might have to do it a few times)
POOF! network’s back worked for me anyway
oh a few ppl already posted that - sry
@Adam: Usually that works. But if you really screw it up (like I did), then as soon as you click/drag on the sidebar item, you’ll get the “volume cannot be found” message–you don’t even get a chance to drag the thing out of the sidebar.
I fixed my issue by: Dragging the ‘Network’ icon off the sidebar Opening Finder preferences Re-Selecting ‘Network’ voila! (This is after re-booting both machines, the airport base station, repairing permissions, de-selecting and re-selecting personal file sharing - none of which worked)
Thanks for these instructions. They worked perfectly for me…..
Wow, I’m sure glad I found this thread but the solutions discussed here seems to violate the rule of keeping things simple, doesn’t it? Isn’t there a simpler more elegant way than downloading a not-included-by-default-application in order to edit a plist file?
You’re absolutely correct–this isn’t “the Mac way”. Deleting the entire plist does work, and it’s much simpler than this, but you lose all of your sidebar items.
But why is this happening.
It happens on my MBP with a new copy of leopard.
I have shortcuts to a couple of folders on PCs and they keep failing.
Deleted via plist, but sidebar folder persisted even after relaunch. Dragged onto desktop … gone … exploded into Mac dust (thanks Adam and Jim)
Force Quitting the Finder brought my Network list back.
Wow this is a great post. Had a folder sitting in the sidebar for a year and just decided not to worry about it. Nice to be clean again!
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/plisteditpro.html
There’s a Plist Editor that works perfectly, just one small file and it’s free. Enjoy
Don, Worked for me. Drug the offending item off the sidebar and it is gone. And after all that grief of trying to do some techno-solution. ~Kee
Been wondering about this for a long while but never found the time to look. Every easy fix. Thanks very much! Mike Gola
Thanks so much, I’ve had broken folders sitting there annoying me for weeks- this works a treat :))
Thank you so much. I go nuts when I nuts when I can’t fix things on my mac, you saved my sanity!
You should try this first (clicking and not releasing, then dragging):
Comment number 8 at “http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-system-mac-software/297265-volume-xxx-cannot-found.html”
I just clicked, held down the button, and then dragegd the folders i wanted to remove directly to my trash can, and peeeew gone