Cannot configure downloads to be visible to anyone but Super Users[SOLVED]

[DoctorMunoz]

On a Joomla 4.4 page (relatively fresh, i.e., not updated from J3) with JDownloads 4.0.39 we currently are having troubles configuring downloads so that they are visible to anyone but Super Users.

We'd like to make one Category and all files in it visible and downloadable to anyone without login/registration.

Making a category visible to specific user groups or to everyone (Public) works just fine by setting the appropriate Access Level.
But no matter to what we set the access level of individual Downloads, they are never visible to anyone but Super Users. The category just stays empty for anyone else. A weird thing is that even for Super Users, in the Categories list, the shown number of files is still 0.

I have looked at the documentation and as far as I can tell have configured permissions and access levels appropriately.
The operating system file permissions are set properly (readable by anyone - 0644).

We have been trying to find a solution for this for some time now and are out of ideas. Any hints you can give as to what we might want to look at?

[ColinM]

Hi
Have you looked at documentation in
https://www.jdownloads.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=32
There are several articles that may be useful
A key is to remove the global permissions and then setup your desired permissions in the top level categories.
I will send you a Private Message.

Colin

[DoctorMunoz]

Thanks for the reply and for the offer to look at the page!

I got it working in the meantime; I had tried a fresh install on a completely new test installation and everything was working there; so on the installation with the issues, I copied the data folder, then removed all JDownloads extensions (choosing to delete all data), reinstalled it, and then recreated the categories by copying back the data and using the "Check Download Area" functionality.
After that, all I had to do was set the access level as we wanted and everything worked!

In short, I have no idea what the problem was, but it is fortunately fixed.