Trash is Unable to Empty Old Pages Application

[generdude]

After reinstalling Catalina on my friend’s iMac to solve a different problem, we noticed going through the Applications folder that there were two Pages apps, one new and one very old. We tossed the old one into the Trash but we couldn’t delete it (“could not be deleted…in use”). After confirming that Pages was not open I tried holding down Option while attempting to empty the Trash, restarting, to no avail. I moved Pages out of the Trash and put it back into Applications. At that point the old Pages renamed itself Pages 2 in the Applications folder. I put that into the Trash, but now both the Trash folder and the Applications folder had both Pages and Pages 2 copies. I tried using AppCleaner which did attempt to uninstall the old Pages but didn’t accomplish that task.

We also, via Get Info, changed the Sharing & Permissions to Read & Write, including all the related Package Contents.

One of the side effects of this is that now SuperDuper won’t make copies - here’s the error message:

So, what are we to make of this? How to get it out of the Trash is the desire. I realize Apple doesn’t like its own apps to be deleted sometimes.

 

[Fishrrman]

Boot from an EXTERNAL boot drive (NOT from the internal).

Click on the icon for the internal drive.
Bring up "get info" on it.
Click the lock at the bottom, enter password.
Put a check into "ignore ownership on this volume".
Close get info.

Now you can delete almost anything on the internal drive.
You should be able to wipe out Pages.
But be careful -- you can also delete stuff that perhaps you shouldn't.

If it was me, I'd delete ALL versions of Pages, and start over.

 

[generdude]

Sorry, I had neglected to check back in. I restored the iMac from an external boot SSD drive with Time Machine and, since Time Machine does not restore the trash, the iMac's trash was emptied. No more Pages.