problems uploading program to Uno after Mac OS update

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

I've just updated my Mac OS to Catalina from Mavericks bc I suspected instability in the ancient OS was causing problems uploading programs to Arduino Uno to run neopixel strips -- programs that used to work just fine, but had recently run sometimes & not other times. The programs would verify okay, and claim to have uploaded successfully, but no moving lights. I tried different Unos and different neopixel strips, but no joy.
Since the OS update, it's even worse. Only one of my programs -- a neopixel bitmap -- even opens, and it won't verify, claiming "Error compiling for board Arduino Uno" & indicating that: loading libs from /Users/lynrichards/Documents/Arduino/libraries: reading dir /Users/lynrichards/Documents/Arduino/libraries: open /Users/lynrichards/Documents/Arduino/libraries: operation not permitted.
And although my other programs show up in the Open Recent list, none of them will even open.

I'm an art student, not a programmer, and these moving lights -- once so straightforward and unproblematic -- are a key feature of my graduating project, due to open in one month. The idea of reconstructing these programs now is a little overwhelming!

Has anyone seen anything like this? does anyone have any idea what is going on?
Many thanks for any help you can offer! Lyn

2

Please do this:

  • When you encounter an error, you'll see a button on the right side of the orange bar "Copy error messages" in the Arduino IDE (or the icon that looks like two pieces of paper at the top right corner of the black console window in the Arduino Web Editor). Click that button..
  • In a forum reply here, click on the reply field.
  • Click the </> button on the forum toolbar. This will add the forum's code tags markup to your reply.
  • Press "Ctrl + V". This will paste the error between the code tags.
  • Move the cursor outside of the code tags before you add any additional text to your reply.

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