There is a known permissions issue running Payroll or 1099 on Macs with OS X 10.7. The permissions for the Hard Drive (Macintosh HD, etc.) are automatically set to Read Only on 10.7. But both Payroll (and the conversion wizard) and 1099 require that the user has Read & Write permissions for the Hard Drive in order to properly function. Therefore, most Mac OS X 10.7 users will experience permissions problems when trying to run either of the affected applications.

To fix this issue, perform the following steps:

1. Open any Finder window.
2. Right-click the Hard Drive (commonly ‘Macintosh HD’) and select ‘Get Info’. Alternatively, if right-click is unavailable, first select the Hard Drive, then go to the Finder’s File menu to select ‘Get Info’ ( Command+I ).
3. Click the lock in the bottom right of the Info window and enter the user’s password to unlock the permissions settings.
4. There should be three different sets of permissions (commonly ‘system’, ‘admin’, and ‘everyone’). Change the top two (‘system’ and ‘admin’) privileges to be ‘Read & Write’. In some cases, you may also have to change the bottom privilege (‘everyone’) to ‘Read & Write’ as well.
5. Close the Info window and relaunch the application to ensure proper functioning.