Deleting an "undeletable" file?

[Candide7]

So, I have an odd question. I'm on a MacBook, running OSX (whatever the latest version is...I think Snow Leopard). I downloaded an attachment from an email, and it was an excel spreadsheet for the newest version of Office, which I don't have. So I saved the file to my desktop, and then opened it. It automatically opened with Numbers. Apparently two files were downloaded, and I threw away/erased one file...but the other one (named "feb10 overnight for rds.xlsx.download") is apparently undeleteable. I can't move it to the trash, I can't re-name it, I can't move it to another folder. It's just stuck there, on my desktop. Immovable. I can't even open it, either.

Has this ever happened to anybody? How would one go about deleting an undeletable file?

 

[Zortrium]

Use Terminal to rm -f the sucker. If that doesn't make sense, you'll do something like the following (carefully -- you don't want to delete stuff accidentally):

cd Desktop
rm -f 'feb10 overnight for rds.xlsx.download'

 

[Denarius]

Use Terminal to rm -f the sucker. If that doesn't make sense, you'll do something like the following (carefully -- you don't want to delete stuff accidentally):

cd Desktop
rm -f 'feb10 overnight for rds.xlsx.download'

That will probably need to have sudo added to the start of the command.

Another way would be to highlight the file, go to get info, go to sharing and permissions, add yourself to the file's permissions with read and write access then trash as normal.

 

[jzpearson]

similar problem

I have an excel file named 5D951800 that recently showed up on my desktop. I do not know where it came from or how it got there. I can not open it, or 'get info' from it, delete it or even move it. Does anyone have any idea what this is, where it might have came from and how i can get rid of it? Thank you.

 

[cchrysos]

Reboot or Force Quit Finder

I have an excel file named 5D951800 that recently showed up on my desktop. I do not know where it came from or how it got there. I can not open it, or 'get info' from it, delete it or even move it. Does anyone have any idea what this is, where it might have came from and how i can get rid of it? Thank you.

If you reboot your machine or force quit Finder the file will be gone.

 

[GGJstudios]

If you reboot your machine or force quit Finder the file will be gone.

Like yours, jzpearson's post was their first and only post, a year ago, and they haven't been in the forum since then. You may want to check thread dates before responding.

 

[onefreehour]

First Post!!

Like yours, jzpearson's post was their first and only post, a year ago, and they haven't been in the forum since then. You may want to check thread dates before responding.

Like jzpearson and cchrysos this is my first post (and probably my last). The question may have been posed over a year ago however no solution was ever provided until cchrysos posted a response. I was having the same issue and all it took was relaunching finder to remove those files. Thank cchrysos you were a big help.

 

[Teddy1308]

So, I have an odd question. I'm on a MacBook, running OSX (whatever the latest version is...I think Snow Leopard). I downloaded an attachment from an email, and it was an excel spreadsheet for the newest version of Office, which I don't have. So I saved the file to my desktop, and then opened it. It automatically opened with Numbers. Apparently two files were downloaded, and I threw away/erased one file...but the other one (named "feb10 overnight for rds.xlsx.download") is apparently undeleteable. I can't move it to the trash, I can't re-name it, I can't move it to another folder. It's just stuck there, on my desktop. Immovable. I can't even open it, either.

Has this ever happened to anybody? How would one go about deleting an undeletable file?

So I am fully aware that this post is many years old, but to help out some one, well in my case I had a game on my desktop that I could not get rid of, it said something like "this object can't be deleted" every time i tried to do so t. Well what the problem was, it was 1 file inside a folder in the game folders was locked, so you would just have to search thru your folders in whatever program or game and find that one locked file and unlock it, that should solve all your problems.