It is possible that you managed to change the owner of the file, though unlikely.
Can you type: ls -dl ~/Desktop observe the output drwxr-xr-x 8 [owner] [group] 4096 2006-11-08 15:24 /home/******/Desktop/ Owner and Group should normally be your user name. If owner is wrong type: sudo chown [your username] ~/Desktop If group is wrong this shouldn't matter, but you may want to correct it with: sudo chgrp [your username] ~/Desktop if the permissions (the bit at the front of the output) does not look like 'drwxr-xr-x' type: chmod 755 ~/Desktop (as suggested prior) If you are the owner of the file it should allow you to do this fine. If it doesn't you may want to use 'sudo', but if your not owner you want be able to write as only owner can write to the directory (with permissions 755) Hope that helps -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/