# Permission denied when importing FASTQ files

**URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/permission-denied-when-importing-fastq-files/18490
**Category:** Technical Support
**Created:** [February 15, 2021, 1:10pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/permission-denied-when-importing-fastq-files/18490 "2021-02-15T13:10:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 13

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### Author: ![SoilRotifer](https://forum.qiime2.org/user_avatar/forum.qiime2.org/soilrotifer/32/21071_2.png) [@SoilRotifer](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/SoilRotifer)
#### Post date: [February 19, 2021, 3:31pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/permission-denied-when-importing-fastq-files/18490/13 "2021-02-19T15:31:27Z")

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Hi @taf1g17,

This is very helpful thank you!

As I mentioned earlier is this thread, you can not use Windows-style file paths, but the file paths as WSL understands them. The best way to make sure you are using the correct Linux file paths is to `cd` into the folder where your sequence files are located, and type `pwd`. This will provide you with the absolute directory path. Do this within the WSL Terminal of course. 😉

```
taf1g17$: cd share/seqs-to-import
taf1g17:~/share/seqs-to-import$ pwd  
    /home/taf1g17/share/seqs-to-import

```

Append this directory path to each of your files in your manifest file like so:

```
sample-id forward-absolute-filepath reverse-absolute-filepath
s1 /home/taf1g17/share/seqs-to-import/seqs_r1.fastq.gz /home/taf1g17/share/seqs-to-import/seqs_r2.fastq.gz
...

```

Check out this [UNIX / LINUX Tutorial](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/unix/index.htm).

-Hope this helps!  
-Mike

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