After Effects 2021 can't save my project file

[DemolitionCraft]

I've been using these After Effects the whole day from the morning till now. 

The program worked fine and everything went well. However, when I wanted to save my project file or import or save as. I've clicked everything but nothing happened. I don't really know what to do. And I have to hand in some files today and it seems it won't help...

I bought the whole adobe package and this little issue really frustrated me.

Please let me know if you guys had the same problem or solved the problem! It would be really helpful for me and for everyone!

Thank you 😄

[Havana26123720k0jr]

Okay, I think I fixed this in some weird way and I'll try to explain incase it helps someone else.

After trying all these suggestions (going through finder to change read/write settings, finding a security/privacy setting, collecting dependencies) I eventually tried to see if I could somehow export the entire project file through Media Encoder (since Media Encoder is allowed to Write onto my computer). Once I clicked on the link that lets you choose where it exports, I noticed that it wanted to save next to a AE file that's name ended with the title of my comp. So I individually sent each comp to media encoder until I had created a bunch of AE files in some random generated location. Then I opened the project folder in Finder and copied all the AE files into there. Then I closed everything and opened the main comp's AE file, and imported the rest of the files into the opened project. 

Now, I'm glad I got this far because I know my project saved. But I still have to figure out how to make it save from AE, so I don't have to keep using Media Encoder. 

Hope this makes sense. If not, I'll try to recreate it and screen record the process. 

[trucepatriq]

So i experienced this issue today and i think i found a way to troubleshoot the problem. The easiest way is to export your project to media encoder then rename the temporary file that media encoder saves when you send a project to it. That file is usually a replica of your original project.
So you can close your after effects, launch it again, open the file and continue working on your project.

I hope you find this helpful even if it's 2 years after your post