I followed some advice here, and it did work, but Im not sure if i should be able to share files from a public upload folder or not, or why the original folder wouldn’t allow me to move the files over.
The advice i followed was "
Manually disable locking state:
put ownCloud in maintenance mode: edit config/config.php and change this line:
‘maintenance’ => true,
Empty table oc_file_locks: Use tools such as phpmyadmin or connect directly to your database and run:
DELETE FROM oc_file_locks WHERE 1
disable maintenance mode (undo first step)." So thank you to Unable to delete Files/Folders