Empty Trash Item in Use

Question

I recently upgraded my 2012 MacMini to Catalina. It was a bit of a nightmare as the internal drive wasn’t formatted to APFS. I imaged the drive and did a Time Machine backup then booted from the imaged drive, formatted the internal to APFS. Ran the Catalina installer file from the imaged drive and installed it on the internal drive. I then transferred all the data from the TM backup. It all seemed to work fine and I’m up and running.

The only issue is that It moved/copied a couple extra versions of user folders. I went in and cleaned/deleted them from the Users & Groups Sys Pref. When I go to empty the trash, it says the following for apparently 5 items that won’t delete.

The operation can’t be completed because the item “Data” is in use.
The operation can’t be completed because the item “com.apple.mail” is in use.
The operation can’t be completed because the item “Containers” is in use.
The operation can’t be completed because the item “Library” is in use.
The operation can’t be completed because the item “acct name” is in use.

(account name redacted) 😊

I have tried rebooting the computer several times and tried the force empty all to no avail. Any help would be appreciated!!

Answer 1

I got a similar problem. My locked files were located in the trash bin of my Time Machine disk.

In the end, I forced the deletion by using the rm command.

1. Open your Trash window to actually see the locked files.

2. Open a terminal session to type the following (have your password ready)

   sudo rm -R [drag and drop the locked files here]
   

3. Type your password when asked to do so.

Source: https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/how-empty-trash-on-mac-3682422/

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On a side note, I found something interesting: I noticed that the folder I wanted to remove showed as "Username's Macbook" in the Finder window, but in the terminal, it was like "Username/1/2/4/s Macbook".

Too bad I didn't write it down. So I wonder if there was something wrong with the character encoding.