How to delete files form trash individually

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I'm attempting to delete a file from the trash, but do not want to empty the entire thing. How do I do this?
 
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Maybe someone has a concrete answer for you, but I'm curious about something. Not trying to nitpick...

Is there a reason there are things in your trash that you don't want deleted? If you are looking to keep them, maybe restore them to their location and delete them later?

Not trying to nitpick your style or how you do things. Whatever works for you...
 
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Is there a reason there are things in your trash that you don't want deleted? If you are looking to keep them, maybe restore them to their location and delete them later?
I would have to agree.
The Trash is not someplace to store things or a place to keep things "in limbo" while you decide what to do with them. The only time you should put something in Trash is if you want to delete it and are ready to empty the Trash right afterwards.
 
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I do not believe that you can do so, of course I can always be wrong, but I do not think that I am in this case. Just one of the minor differences between Mac OS X and Windows.
 
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I'm attempting to delete a file from the trash, but do not want to empty the entire thing. How do I do this?
Open the trash and drag all the files onto the desktop or into a new folder.

If there are a lot of files, click on the trash's open folder, press the Command key and the A key to define All of them at once, then click on one of them but don't release the mouse button. When you drag the one file, all will go with it.

Then move the one you want to delete back into the trash and empty it.
 
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Hypothetically, if you were a kid downloading porn on your parent's computer and didn't want them to know what you'd been doing, this could be a question you'd ask...
 
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Talking from experience there Jaygray??? heh heh
 
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Any kid, I think, wouldn't be stumped, especially if he's downloading porn.

But what do I know?
 
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Related trash question...

Maybe I should have started a new thread...

Is there a way to sort the trash by "most recently deleted?" I've noticed that you can sort by "date modified" but that doesn't help as much...
 
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Not that I know of, but they should be there in that order anyway, as each time you put a file in there it should be the last file.
 
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Trash is trash. If you don't want to throw something out, archive it somewhere and dispose of it later.

Alternatively, you could always write an app that sort of decays or eats your trash over time. I don't get why you'd want to do that, but you can. You could also write what amounts to a trash picker so you could zap individual files that are in the trash.
 
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Talking from experience there Jaygray??? heh heh

When I was a kid, they definitely had porn... But "downloading it" hadn't been thought of yet.
 
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Is there a reason there are things in your trash that you don't want deleted? If you are looking to keep them, maybe restore them to their location and delete them later?

Not trying to nitpick your style or how you do things. Whatever works for you...
There are other 'unsneaky' reasons why a person might not want to delete everything from the trash: I've deleted things to the trash while cleaning my puter and realized a prog wouldn't work. It's frustrating when you do this in the middle of deleting alot of unwanted/unneeded things and there is one needed thing in there. Or in somecases, it is often how many unwittingly found out what files did what or when you mistakenly click the wrong file to delete.

Also while checking out Appdelete I think it was, I found that it was taking more files then the progs I was wanting to delete.

Brown Study said:
Open the trash and drag all the files onto the desktop or into a new folder.

If there are a lot of files, click on the trash's open folder, press the Command key and the A key to define All of them at once, then click on one of them but don't release the mouse button. When you drag the one file, all will go with it.

Then move the one you want to delete back into the trash and empty it.
This is a good one. Since I mentioned Appdelete, I think that was the one that also had the option that lets you check or uncheck what it is deleting... look here http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/31123 and also read some of the comments as there are some great advice with them.. speaking of which I need to reinstall it!
 
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lol, not a kid downloading porn.

We have a new managing editor and we do not want to completely empty the trash on our production machine until we comb through all the files and make sure nothing valuable is there.

So from what I'm getting we can not delete things individually?
 
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lol, not a kid downloading porn.

We have a new managing editor and we do not want to completely empty the trash on our production machine until we comb through all the files and make sure nothing valuable is there.

So from what I'm getting we can not delete things individually?
No.

1. Create an archive folder wherever you want. Put in on the desktop, put it in Documents, but put it somewhere.

2. Move all of the files from your trash into your archive folder. If you think something might be of value, then get it out of the trash.

3. Backup your system, and make sure you have a copy of the archive folder.

4. Check all of the files in your archive folder at your leisure. If a file is good, keep it and put it wherever. If it's trash, put it back in the trash and mean it.
 

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You can from the Unix. But it would be better to do what mathogre suggested. Remember accidents happen, someone can easily empty the trash and you would then have a possible problem. Just create a temporary folder and place the stuff that maybe going to the trash there. Then from that folder, sort through it, and place the unwanted items in the trash.
 
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You can from the Unix. But it would be better to do what mathogre suggested. Remember accidents happen, someone can easily empty the trash and you would then have a possible problem. Just create a temporary folder and place the stuff that maybe going to the trash there. Then from that folder, sort through it, and place the unwanted items in the trash.
You're absolutely right. It can be done in Unix. I know where to find it on the Mac and how to do it. I also have too much experience in what you understand. It's very easy to lose valuable data if you don't know what you're doing, and even if you do know what you're doing.

When the OP mentioned this was production work, my immediate reaction was to protect the data and not risk losing it. I've managed a couple projects, and if a staff member had come to me with that question, I'd have responded the same way: firmly and directly.

I'll admit I don't know the ins and outs of the OS X trash system, but I do know what it is in the Windows world. My guess is there are similarities. Anything in trash is subject to overwriting should drive space become tight. Earlier in the day at M-F, someone posted something about data in the trash being automatically discarded after something like 30 days. The bottom line is that trash is volatile. If you have anything you want to keep, the trash is NOT the place to keep it.

Okay, now it's time for me to chill. Aaaah.
 
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Dang it, the UNIX angle on the trash (.Trash) has already been covered. Oh well.

I consider Trash to be very much like /tmp was back in the days before Mac OS's 'flavor' of BSD UNIX. If you stuck something in /tmp, chances were that it was going to go away at some point, and /tmp being what it was for well, you expected that the system would clean it up in some way. Usually after a reboot.

We don't reboot our Macs that often, however (though with all these system updates it seems to happen more often than I'd like but that's how it is here in The Future.) Anyway, back up a lot and consider the Trash to be just that.
 
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You can use the terminal.

cd ~/.Trash
ls
rm filename.ext

But be careful. Using the terminal can be dangerous.
 

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