the action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program

Anonymous
2013-03-21T10:22:13+00:00

this is annoying

the files or folders in question are not open in another program, windows is just refusing to let them be moved or deleted due a recent action ie: photographs moved elsewhere etc

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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.

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Anonymous
2013-03-21T10:43:05+00:00

This may also be helpful:

Open Windows explorer.

Click ‘Organize -> Folder and search options’ (or ‘View -> Folder options’).

Select the ‘View’-tab.

In the ‘Advanced settings’ window, disable ‘Launch folder windows in a separate process’.

You may need to force restart all explorer instances (via task manager) or reboot your computer if the setting is not applied immediately.

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-02-18T16:54:15+00:00

    Keep in mind that this solution does not resolve the issue for everyone, it is an on going problem for many.

    Surprisingly, operating systems present different experiences for each of us depending on hard and software and it is an absolute nightmare for providers such as Microsoft.

    Hopefully this issue will be completely absent in w10...

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-02-18T15:59:47+00:00

    This is such a simple solution and the only one that worked for me.  Thank you very much for taking the time to share it, almost ashamed I couldn't figure it out.  I would imagine it should be quite embarrassing for microsoft to develop and more importantly to allow this contradictory operation to continue to exist.

    Thanks again

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-02-11T16:15:18+00:00

    This worked on one folder i just tried..thank you

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-02-05T16:44:39+00:00

    this is annoying

    the files or folders in question are not open in another program, windows is just refusing to let them be moved or deleted due a recent action ie: photographs moved elsewhere etc

    I tried killing Explorer but that didn't help. What helped in my case was closing Outlook. I had saved some files from an Outlook email message to the folder I was trying to move. For some reason, Outlook was not letting go of the folder. 

    I don't know enough about Windows to explain why this is (some DLL issue?), but hopefully Microsoft will fix it before people start jumping out of windows, if you catch my meaning. 

    I discovered several years ago that outlook is intrinsically entwined with explorer when I attempted to change the font size in outlook.

    Based on this discovery closing outlook to relieve the folder contents makes sense to me.

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