Desktop Permission Denied

Anytime I try to open my Desktop from the finder I get this message: "The folder “Desktop” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents."

When I try to open the desktop from a terminal cd ~/desktop, it says permission denied.

It started when an excel document showed up on my desktop that I cannot delete.

Any ideas?

Right click the Desktop folder in Finder > Get Info > Sharing & Permissions. What does it have listed under that? Does your user have "Read & Write" permissions? If not, change it so you do.

That works. Thank you. However, I still have a file on the desktop which I cannot delete. Anytime I try to delete it I get a message saying The item “042B9300” can’t be moved to the Trash because it can’t be deleted.

Check the permissions on the file the same way you did for the Desktop folder. Ensure that you have read & write privileges. Once you do, you should be able to delete it.