Weird Excel file appeared and cannot be deleted, moved, renamed or opened

Finder force quit worked for me, Ta!

Just go to the Terminal app (in Utilities) and type in the command "Killall Finder", and then "exit". The files will disappear.

Is anyone in Apple going to try to fix this problem or are we destined to continually forcequit finder? or quit using excel?

It's MicroSoft's application, they've had at least 8 years to fix it (that's as far back as I could be bothered going - could be longer).

Thry Dimaxum's solution. Worked for me without having to resort all the complicated fixes--thankfully. Just reading some of the other solutions scared me! Emptying trash and restart--great, simple uncomplicated--and it worked for me. Thanks Dimaxum.

This works ... thanks for the tip! Rebooting also works and that's what I was doing previously to resolve the issue, but this a MUCH faster solution.

Thanks so much for posting the original query, and to everyone who responded. I had one of these files pop up last night, and it worried me. But then I found this discussion and was reassured -- and rebooting solved my problem. So glad to have found this community of people willing to help! 🙂

As this thread's been brought up again, here's the current fix list;

In order of escalation;

1. Relaunch Finder ( > force quit > select Finder, select 'relaunch')

2. if that didn't do it, log out and back in again.

3. If it's still being stubborn, restart the Mac.

Came in with a "cannot be deleted" xx.ics file and its partner, xx.part. DoctorCowboy did the trick. Many thanks.

That sounds like a PC virus.

No, it's a MS Outlook calender file. Some MS applications don't clear their temporary files properly after saving.

Excel is the usual culprit, but it happens with Word and others too.

Usually, just relaunching Finder will get rid of it.

you could also quit finder (if you already enabled the terminal command)

defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool YES

(return)

killall Finder

(return)

or just relaunch the finder from the "force quit applications" window (option, command, esc.)