I accidentally pasted all my pictures to my desktop and cant get rid of them. Help!

I've got a MBP running OSX 10.10. I was trying to copy and paste pictures to an external hard drive but accidentally pasted them to the desktop. When I go to delete them, nothing happens. When I look at the desktop through finder, all the pictures are gray/shaded and have a size of zero bytes. I've tried dragging them to the trash and right clicking and move to trash without any luck. I've also tried force quitting finder (only application running), and turning the computer off and back on. Nothing seems to work. All other aspects seem to be working properly. Does anyone have a suggestion?

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Aug 7, 2015 12:28 PM

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11 replies

Aug 7, 2015 12:33 PM in response to I_like_to_bike

Select one of the items in question in the Finder and open the Info window. If the Modified date is January 24, 1984, see below.

Back up all data before proceeding.

Select the text on the line below by dragging across it. Don't include the blank space at the end of the line. Only the text should be highlighted.

touch -t 198001010000

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V, then press the space bar.

Now switch to the Finder and and select all the item(s) in question. If there are thousands of items, only select a hundred or so. Drag into the Terminal window. More text will be added to what you entered.

Click in the Terminal window to activate it, then press return.

Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear. You can then quit Terminal.

Relaunch the Finder. You should now be able to access the files as usual. The modification dates will still be inaccurate, but they'll be corrected the next time you modify the files.

Aug 7, 2015 2:58 PM in response to I_like_to_bike

It's not safe to do anything at all without backups. You haven't followed my instructions, the first of which was to back up all data. I'm not comfortable making any other suggestions except the one below. Good luck.

Shut down the computer immediately and don't turn it on again until you have at least one external hard drive (two or more recommended) to dedicate to backup. Each backup drive must have at least enough capacity to hold all the data on the internal drive comfortably, as well as any data that you have on secondary drives. Then follow the instructions in this support article.

Aug 7, 2015 1:30 PM in response to Linc Davis

Tried it again in terminal...this is what I entered


Last login: Fri Aug 7 14:44:25 on ttys000

John--Shawna-Haaks-MacBook-Pro:~ Haak$ touch -t 198001010000 /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4439.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4440_00.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4440.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4441_00.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4441.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4442.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4443.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4444.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4445.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4446.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4447.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4449.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4450.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4451.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4452.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4453.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4454.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4455.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4456.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4457.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4458.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4459.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4460.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4461.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4462.jpg /Users/Haak/Desktop/100_4463.jpg

John--Shawna-Haaks-MacBook-Pro:~ Haak$

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I accidentally pasted all my pictures to my desktop and cant get rid of them. Help!

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