Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, Jaguar Edition, The

Throwing Away Locked Files

If a file is locked, you cannot throw it away; if you try, you’ll get a message telling you that you don’t have “sufficient privileges” to trash the item. This warning, “sufficient privileges,” covers a lot of ground—it might mean the file is simply locked in the Get Info box and you can go unlock it (explained below), or perhaps it belongs to some other user, or perhaps only the administrator of the computer can throw it away because the file is some sort of important system file.

This is a locked file—you can see the tiny lock on the bottomleft corner of the icon. You can unlock most files in the Get Info box.

You’ll probably see this message more often than you care to.

If the file is yours and you created ...