Deleting and moving word documents

[tenpasteight]

I am running Word 2013 in Windows 8.1. I have many MS Word 2003 files. Very often, but not always, windows explorer refuses to allow me to move or delete these saying that the file is open in word. It is not and often word is not even running. Any clues? Roger

[Stefan Blom]

What you describe suggests that one or more "lock" files have been left behind from a previous Word session. These files, also called owner files, have names starting with ~$ and the remainder of the name is identical to the original file name. For assistance with locating and deleting the files, take a look at http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm.

For more on temporary files in general, see the Knowledge Base article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/211632/en-us.

[Charles Kenyon]

Also, check in Application Manager to make sure that you do not have one or more Word.exe processes running in your background.

[Stefan Blom]

Good idea. Restarting Windows would of course take care of that as well. I believe this is discussed in Graham's article too.