Locked Files wtf?

[Melkor]

Okay I'm new to mac's and this has been bamboozeling me for days now.

I had some lecture slides that are in powerpoint files and I wanted to delete them. The problem was I kept getting a message saying they were locked ( which they were, as indicated by the little lock in the corner).


I would like to know why they were locked and why they were so difficult to delete.

I manged to delete them eventually by using the ol' "chflags -R nouchg" thingy in the terminal.

I just worried me that I might have deleted something important because I had to go to so much trouble to delete it. It all seemed so strange.

Btw, should I continue to do the "chflags -R nouchg" thingy in future when I'm in the same situation or is there a better way to do it?

Cheers.

 

[PlaceofDis]

well you can just "get info" on the item and unlock it from there

 

[Melkor]

Cool that worked! Thanks PlaceofDis!

But I am curious to know why it was locked in the first place. Any ideas? It's just a normal powerpoint file.

 

[PlaceofDis]

Cool that worked! Thanks PlaceofDis!

But I am curious to know why it was locked in the first place. Any ideas? It's just a normal powerpoint file.

sent to you/downloaded file?

could be that the person doesn't want people editing/copying the file for redistribution?

 

[Melkor]

sent to you/downloaded file?

could be that the person doesn't want people editing/copying the file for redistribution?

Interesting. I got it off a secure server in my college. You must be right. Thanks again man. You put me at ease.

 

[PlaceofDis]

Interesting. I got it off a secure server in my college. You must be right. Thanks again man. You put me at ease.

sure no problem, some files are locked for odd reasons, the WMP app, has some random files that are locked, making it a PITA to delete as well, i wouldn't worry about the files, as long as you know what they are before you are getting rid of them you should be all good to go.

but i have known teachers who lock their files so that they aren't tampered with, or well as a bit of a deterrent from being tampered with at least.