MacOS – Hidden ‘in use’ file preventing Office MAC 2011 uninstall

macosmojavems officeunix

I am moving from Mac Office 2011 to Office 365. After running the uninstaller, An invisible file in the Excel package, Microsoft Office > Microsoft Excel > Contents > Resources > En.lproj > Help > Art > wheel, continues to show “in use” despite several restarts, so I cannot empty it from the trash. My UNIX skills are embryonic at best. How do I kill this file?

Best Answer

If sudo rm didn't delete it, then maybe it somehow got the schg flag set?

You could try this:

    sudo chflags noschg /Users/bob/.Trash/nasty.file.ext

    sudo /bin/rm -f /Users/bob/.Trash/nasty.file.ext

As I mentioned in the comments, you could also try moving the file to /tmp/ and rebooting, since that usually clears out the /tmp/ but I have a sneaking suspicion that isn't going to help in this case.

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