"Access to C:\My Paratext 9 Projects\localusers.txt is denied"

Question

I’ve seen two different people reporting this error message this week. They were unable to start Paratext because of this error.

Both were able to fix the file permissions for the “My Paratext 9 Projects” folder to give themselves access, and then Paratext would work.

To see what the WIndows permissions are for that folder, go to the folder in File Viewer, right click on it, select Properties, then the Security tab.

The top pane shows the different groups of users and the bottom pane shows the permissions for the selected group.

Here, the “Users” group is selected, and it shows that group has permissions to Read and execute, List contents and read. This is not sufficient to run Paratext, because Paratext needs to write changes to that folder. The user account needs to have full access.

Your login on the computer may be as an ordinary user, or as an administrator.
To see which, go to Control Panel > User Accounts and see how Windows describes your account. This is what my computer shows, that I am an administrator. That means in the security for “My Paratext 9 Projects” I should check whether Administrators have full access to the folder.