Option key???

Total Mac newb reporting in.

There's something in my trash that does not want to leave my glorious mac, not surprising

Anyways the mac says to get rid of the file i have to hold the "option" key whilst clicking empty... I don't know what button that is. I would check a mac manual but i wasn't given one, i got the macbook from my University when i joined and it only came as the laptop itself, no box or nothing, including the charger.

I can only assume I'm having some sort of windows "press any key" problem.

Any know of this "option" key???

the option key is also labled 'alt'. It's a command modifier really, just like control or command

Now, does this file only exist when you have a USB storage device (hard drive, thumb drive etc) attached to your mac?

Thank you, that worked fine. They are files that i transfered from a windows PC using a USB device. Just some word documents and visual basic programs really, I just needed to store them temporarily while i reformatted the PC

Check your USB device as items moved to the trash are not actually removed until the trash is emptied. So if you trashed them, removed the memory stick prior to emptying trash, you may find them magically still there!