Phantom file

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Dave Davison
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Phantom file

Post by Dave Davison »

(i) Strange title I admid but that about sums it up. With all files closed when I try to log offm a prompt says an open "Word" doc is preventing shut down so I opened the "Task Manager" to identify it & find that only Task Manager is running.

(i) Don't know if this matter is related but I have a Word doc that I have somehow, inadvertently, saved as "Read only" which I cannot delete, is there a way to overcome this blocking? :scratch: x2

Any clues please?
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HansV
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Re: Phantom file

Post by HansV »

Activate the Details tab of the Task MAnager.
Do you see WINWORD.EXE in the list? If so, right-click it and select End Task from the context menu.
Best wishes,
Hans

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Dave Davison
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Re: Phantom file

Post by Dave Davison »

Hi Hans, thanks for the reply, can not see the definition you cited sorry.

Regards Dave.
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HansV
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Re: Phantom file

Post by HansV »

Strange. When you shut down Windows and you get a message that something blocks it, you can usually select 'Shut down anyway'. Can you do that?
Best wishes,
Hans

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Dave Davison
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Re: Phantom file

Post by Dave Davison »

YES, just thought it strange that it claims something is still open when Task Manager shows nothing. Not really much of an inconvenience, just wondered if by constantly overriding the promp it might be detremental to the system. Thanks all the same, Regards Dave.

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stuck
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Re: Phantom file

Post by stuck »

The 'file in use' screen shot in the first post doesn't look like something that would appear when trying to shut down Windows. It looks more like something Explorer would pop-up when you try to delete the file you say you can't delete.

In which case, at that point /while that is still on-screen, look in Task Manager and find Word and use the 'end task' option.

Ken

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Dave Davison
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Re: Phantom file

Post by Dave Davison »

Should have mentioned, this only happens when I have had a "Word" doc open but I can -as I said- hit the "Close down anyway" button or go to Task manager and close it there. As the Ausies would say, No worries mate. Thanks again for the resonses. Dave

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LineLaline
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Re: Phantom file

Post by LineLaline »

I had this quite often until... 😊
What was the case with me is that I had the Preview pane open in the file Explorer and I had glanced at the file before opening it. This did it every time. Silly. Now, I usually turn the preview pane off. Never a problem again.
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LineLaline
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Re: Phantom file

Post by LineLaline »

Dave Davison wrote:
07 Dec 2022, 13:12
Should have mentioned, this only happens when I have had a "Word" doc open but I can -as I said- hit the "Close down anyway" button or go to Task manager and close it there. As the Ausies would say, No worries mate. Thanks again for the resonses. Dave
Any luck with closing the 'Preview Pane' in the Explorer window? You'd have to close it before opening the file so this might be tricky. But with me it was that that caused the problem.
Oh and around that very same time something else happened with the preview pane. Before that I was able to select and copy something in, say, a 'txt' file, and paste it in another application. This no longer worked. I could highlight text but no longer really copy it. All sorts of handy things were gone and I ended up having to actually open a file to copy text inside it. This was a major bummer.

Both happened around the same time.
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