Cannot delete phantom files which just appeared on desktop - no extensions

With regard to Excel in particular, you'll find threads on this ghost temp file issue going back at least to 2004.

MS have been queried about it numerous times, but show no inclination to investigate the problem, let alone fix it.

Its something about Excel. Just reboot and the files go away. Its annoying as ****, but that's Microsoft.

It is really irritating. Try this, works for me...

Launch Terminal and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false

Hit enter and then kill Finder:

killall Finder

Gets rid of all icons (stored though). To show the Desktop icons without the irritating Excel icon...

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true

killall Finder

and the normal icons will be back...

I've used the Option-Command-ESC method to quickly clear those phantom files.

It opens a force-close window and just click on Finder then click Relaunch.

It gets rid of the desktop file and refreshes. It's quick and less painful than re-booting.

However, I just had a recent update download...and I noticed one of those phantom files quickly went away soon after I closed Excel.

Hmm...so did the update fix the problem? I'm hoping so!

I just had the same problem with an "xlsx" file on my desktop that i couldnt delete. I noticed it appeared while updating some apps in the appstore, so i waited for the installation to finish. Afterwards the file was still there and i couldnt delete it so i restarted and it is gone.

My conclusions:

1. it seems a temporary file for some update or setup

2. let the updates finish before you try and delete this file

3. if there is no active update and the file is still there just restart and it should dissapear

Hope it helps

Simple fix to this is to just log out and log back in. This does seem to be an Excel 2011 issue specifically with Lion. I was not seeing this problem with Snow Leopard. Rather than using Terminal and repairing permissions, just log out and back in. File(s) in question are gone.

Verifying permissions and restarting my iMac worked for me. Thank you for the suggestion, doe09

I haven't read through any of the reasons why this may be happening, so I apologize if I am duplicating anyone's observations: I find these "phantom" files are appearing when I download a Numbers file as an Excel file from iWork. I am not a tech expert and don't know why this may be.

In Lion there is a solution (which works for many 'bugs'. Restart you computer. It is aways worth fixing disk permissions as well just in case but I have replicated the phantom ecel file issue and fixed it with a simple restart all times.

OSX 10.7.3, MacBook Air i5

Worked for me too

I have the same problem. As others have mentioned, a simple reboot removes the phantom files from my desktop. I haven't been able to prevent them from coming back though. The problem only appears to occur when I add data to an Excel file, then re-save it, as merely accessing the Excel files does not create the phantoms.

Same problem here. I found that if i empty the trash using Onyx the files do go away.

This issue is due to disk permissions problems.

1. Open Disk Utility and run a Disk Permissons Repair on your drive.
2. Reboot.

Ignore all the terminal commands force quitting and whatever other crazy solutions people are suggesting.

It also probably wouldn't hurt to make sure your copy of Office is running with the latest updates.

Repair Disk Permissions does not change permissions for MS Office (or most other non-Apple applications either).

The reboot does the job by itself.

noondaywitch is right. Sorry, Berman - repairing permissions doesn't fix the problem, even running the most updated Office. Seems pretty clear that the issue is with Excel itself.

I was having the same issue with Excel 2008 running on Lion. In fact, I saw the second document appear immediately after saving an excel file I was working on. I repaired disk permissions and restarted my computer and the issue was resolved. Seems to be the solution that worked for most.