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So whenever I'm in a file explorer window and I want to delete a file(eg PDF) I get a "File in use" message.
I've figured out that this is caused by the preview pane. No preview pane no message and the file deletes.
I want to know how I can delete a file with the preview pane active because I want to check the contents to make sure it's the correct file I want to delete?
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Hi Gianluca,
This thread has been created on 2015 and was previously resolved. There has been a lot of changes since then and the resolution provided here may not be applicable anymore. Hence, we recommend you to create your own thread regarding your concern for assistance from our community.
If there's anything else, feel free to reach out to us.
You'd think it would be an easy fix, it does cause a lot of problems, especially if you want to delete a folder and one of your files is trapped in preview mode so you 're locked, maybe it will be fixed by windows 10.
Suffering with this problem as well - for users like myself it's truly frustrating and a huge time suck. I have sometimes 100 files in a folder that I have to look at and determine which to delete. I've created a "to be deleted folder" where I move the file to but it's absolutely insane I should have to do it that way - and it takes me twice the time to do it this way. Such a basic function and they are pretending the problem doesn't exist.
This happens with all files - I don't understand why this would be okay - they have obliterated a necessary and formerly simple function.
I found a third party programme that solves this called 'unlocker' it's free and does the job, trouble is you never know what else these things are packaged with, I just wish my operating system would allow me to delete files without the need for another programme because explorer has 'locked' it, bizarre, is there another forum where faults can be reported that someone form MSFT actually reads?
