Missing Dock Picture Folder / Copied Photos to Desktop

[M-L-D]

I'm new to the Mac-Forums.com and hope this is the appropriate place to ask my question.

I was planing to take my mac to someone to check the Hard Drive. I copied pictures and documents to an external Hard Drive. In my haste I clicked on the picture folder in the Dock and tried to move it to the external Hard Drive. I released the mouse too soon and the whole folder of 10,000 or more pics was copied to my Desktop. I didn't know how to remove so many pictures quickly so I shut down everything and took the Mac to be checked.

With my Mac back at home I opened the Finder and clicked on the "Desktop" folder and there are thousands of jpg and pictures. I tried to open the files and none will open and I get a message saying "Mac OS X is using this file and can't open it." When I move these to the trash there is a message, "Some of the items you are moving are in use by another application. Moving the item can cause problems with the application using them. Are you sure you want to move these items?" " STOP" "CONTINUE" . I click Continue and nothing is put into the trash can. If I click on "Get Info" it shows Zero KB used on the Hard Drive. I checked my external Hard Drive and all my pictures are there. This is making my Mac very slow with the spinning wheel.

I have been deleting the files by selecting a lot of them but I have to click the "CONTINUE" button for each item.
Is there an easier way of deleting these files without having to click "CONTINUE" button thousands of times?

Is it safe to delete all these files?

While trying to find a way to remove these files I found a program "Automator".
I'm not sure how to use this program nor am I sure it will help delete this many files easily?

Mac G5 OS X 10.5.8 Build 9L31a
Dual 2.3 GHz Power PC G5

Thank you so much for any help.
Laura

 

[M-L-D]

Accidently Copied 10,000 pics to Desktop

I'm new to the Mac-Forums.com and hope this is the appropriate place to ask my question. Thank you ahead of time for the help.

I was planing to take my mac to someone to check the Hard Drive. I copied pictures and documents to an external Hard Drive. In my haste I clicked on the picture folder in the Finder and tried to move it to the external Hard Drive. I released the mouse too soon and the whole folder of 10,000 or more pics was copied to my Desktop. I didn't know how to remove so many pictures quickly so I shut down everything and took the Mac to be checked.

After picking up my Mac I opened the Finder and clicked on the "Desktop" folder and there are thousands of jpg and pictures. I tried to open the files and none will open and I get a message saying "Mac OS X is using this file and can't open it." When I move these to the trash there is a message, "Some of the items you are moving are in use by another application. Moving the item can cause problems with the application using them. Are you sure you want to move these items?" " STOP" "CONTINUE" . I click Continue and nothing is put into the trash can. If I click on "Get Info" it shows Zero KB used on the Hard Drive. I checked my external Hard Drive and all my pictures are there. This is making my Mac very slow with the spinning wheel.

I have been deleting the files by selecting a lot of them but I have to click the "CONTINUE" button for each item.
Is there an easier way of deleting these files without having to click "CONTINUE" button thousands of times?

Is it safe to delete all these files? I haven't noticed any problems after deleting some of these files.

Is "Automator" a program I can use to delete thousands of files easily? If so, how do I use this program?

Mac G5 OS X 10.5.8 Build 9L31a
Dual 2.3 GHz Power PC G5

Thank you so much for any help.
Laura

 

[chscag]

Laura:

Please do not double post or cross post. You tagged your cross post to someone else's thread. Your posts have been merged together here.

 

[M-L-D]

Ooops. I just posted this question again. Sorry. Just trying to find the best place to ask the question. Still learning how to use this forum. Actually not knowledgeable about forums. I keep looking for the answer and when I find someone who has a similar problem I posted it there. I won't post this again. Thanks for the info. Not sure what to do other than try to read everything. I just noticed there are a lot of unanswered questions and my OS is very old so this might not be the place to find an answer.

Thank you anyway.
Laura.

 

[cradom]

Make sure your pictures have copied to the external drive first if that's what you want.
Ok, this may be a little scary. Go to Applications/Utilities where you'll find an app called Terminal. Run it.
Assuming you don't need anything else on your desktop, copy and paste this into Terminal:
cd ~/Desktop
rm -rf *.*
This will NOT delete your hard drive if it's on the desktop.
What this does is:
Move your working directory to Desktop
Delete EVERYTHING on the desktop. And I do mean everything. And you cant get it back so make SURE there's nothing you want to keep.
Now quit Terminal and you're done.

 

[MacInWin]

Craig, would it be slightly safer if the rm line was:

rm -rf *.jpg

That should kill all the jpeg files (assuming the photos are in that format) and nothing else. The OP didn't say what the extents of the files were, so your command works in ANY case, but I'm thinking that it's highly likely the pics are jpg.

 

[cradom]

Yes, safer in the sense that only .jpg files will be deleted.
Unfortunately some pics will have .jpeg and some might be .png or .gif so this gets rid of everything.
OP what I gave you is the equivalent of doing a command-A and then dragging to the Trash only much faster.

 

[M-L-D]

Let me see if I understand your instructions before trying this.

1. Make sure my Hard Drive Icon is not on the Desktop?
2. Go to " Applications/Utilities"
3. Find an application called "Terminal", RUN this application
4. Type in:
cd ~/Desktop
rm -rf *.*
/ or /
rm -rf *.jpg
{ I'm not sure what you mean by "Working Directory"? }
{ Not sure what "OP" means? }


Please see a Screen Shot of my Mac here: Mac Help

Click on the image to enlarge.

??? Is my Hard Drive on my Desktop???
It appears to be but when I open the folder "Desktop" I don't see it there. I see it listed under "Devices".

Thank you for your help.

I was trying to learn how to use an app called "Automator" but it will only delete one file at a time. I was trying to figure out how to get it to delete more files but haven't yet. When I am sure I won't delete my Hard drive or other files I'll do as you suggest. I have copied all the pictures to an external drive. Well, I take that back. There are pics in " iPhoto ". I need to check to be sure all those are on the external drive too.

I would like to go slow and only delete one type of file at a time. All of these have "Zero Kb on the disk" I think they are only place holders within the "desktop" folder. They were originally inside a folder called, "Pictures". Otherwise, If they were not placeholders why would all of them have "Zero Kb"? Regardless, I want them gone.


Thank you so much for your help.
Laura

 

[cradom]

OP=Original Poster=You
Working Directory=the directory(folder) you're in (Terminal speak)

Try this first:
Command-A (selects everything in the window)
Drag selected files to Trash
It's a little slower but safer than Terminal. Looks like all those files are aliases if they're 0kb.

You're drive is on the desktop (sort of) it just doesn't show in the folder. Do everything using the folder in Finder.

 

[M-L-D]

After logging into Mac-Forum TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2015 and re-reading the instructions I've been given I opened the Utilities folder and opened up the application Terminal. Not knowing anything about it I closed it right away. After which I started searching for Web sites to help me understand the application Terminal. I'm feeling more comfortable trying to use Terminal to delete thousands of empty picture files in a folder called "Desktop" which is in the "Finder".
---
I would still like to understand a little more before running this purge.
The instructions include:

cd ~/Desktop
rm -rf *.*
/ or /
rm -rf *.jpg

What does rf stand for in the following code? rm -rf *.*

Does rf mean reference? And *.* is sort of a wild card and can mean any file name?

There are 1,894 items in this folder to delete. It's not a matter of dragging them to the trash and hit empty trash. I wish it were that simple. A warning box opens up for each file saying:

"Some of the items you are moving are in use by another application. Moving the items can cause problems with the application using them. Are you sure you want to move these items? "
Directly below this statement are three buttons to push: "SKIP" "STOP" "CONTINUE"

I have to click on "CONTINUE" button for each file I want deleted. I don't want to click the "CONTINUE" button 1,894 times.

How can I be sure my Hard Drive is not in that folder. A snapshot of my computer shows the HD icon on the desktop but it's not inside the "Destop Folder" shown in the "Finder".

Thank you so much for your help. I feel sure this will work but am extra cautious because of never using this application before. But I know you anticipated that.

 

[cradom]

Ok, gonna break it down for you...
cd means 'change directory', in this case "~"=your user folder /Desktop=the Desktop folder.
rm = remove
-rf are "switches" the r = recursive or remove any files in folders lower than the one you're in.
f = force, means don't give a dialog for each file "Are You Sure?"
* is a wildcard
*.* means everything with a period in the filename.
*.jpg means any file ending in ".jpg". This is safer because it wont delete anything BUT files ending in .jpg

The reason you're getting the "files in use" dialog is probably because Finder is reading them to display icons on the Desktop. This is one reason to not keep anything on the Desktop although with faster computers this is not so much a problem anymore. (except in cases such as yours where there are a s**tload of files.)
Try hitting Stop. Hopefully it'll quit.
Your hard drive is not in the Desktop folder. Deleting everything in the folder will not delete the drive.

Edit: all the switches for rm can be found by typing 'man rm' without the quotes in Terminal.