MS Office is notorious for creating temporary files and storing them on your system. These temporary files can buildup over time, using up disk space and slowing your system down. You should make a habit of finding and deleting these temporary files on a regular basis.
A temporary file is created by the MS Office programs to facilitate the undo and redo features and for auto recovery purposes. Generally, these files will “go away” once you save and close your original document; but anytime your system “hiccups”, the MS Office program will write the file to your disk so that in the event of a crash it can recover your file for you. Once you have saved your original file, these temporary files can safely be deleted.
Before you conduct a search of your hard drive for the temporary files, you should close all open documents and programs. Sometimes open programs will have temporary files active in memory. The system will not allow you to delete these temporary files in active memory. You will be presented with a warning stating that “Access is Denied” and the deletion process is halted. You can continue to select other files in the Find window and delete them without concern. Simply put, open files cause the removal of temporary files to be more difficult to accomplish.
How to Find Temporary Files
1. Click on the Start Button on your task bar
2. Select “Files or Folders” from the Find Menu
3. Select the Name and Location tab
4. Type *.tmp in the Named field – the asterisk is a wild card meaning find ANY file with a tmp file extension
5. Choose the appropriate drive from the Look-in Field (usually you will accept the default C:\drive
6. Verify that “Include SubFolders” is selected so that all files and folders on the C:\drive are searched
7. Click on the Find Now button
The Find function will locate all files with a .tmp file extension. You will be able to see the number of files found on the status bar of the Find dialog box.
Deleting the Temporary Files
Note: You may get an error or warning that access is denied if you began this process with open files and or programs. Windows will halt the delete command when it encounters a temp file in active memory.
1. Select “Select All” from the Edit menu in the Find Dialog Box
2. Press the Delete Key on your keyboard
3. Click on OK to confirm moving these files to the recycle bin
Deleting the Zipped Files
Repeat the find process to find all files with a .zip extension (*.zip). You may want to selectively delete the zipped files. Only delete those zipped files that represent a program that has been installed or sets of files that have been expanded. Once the program has been installed or a set of files expanded, you can safely eliminate the zipped file.
Selectively delete the zipped files:
1. Select (highlight) the file you want to delete
2. Press the delete key on your keyboard
3. Click on OK to confirm the deletion
During this deletion process the files are moved to the recycle bin. Until they have been removed from the recycle bin, the files continue to use up hard drive capacity.
Emptying the Recycle Bin
1. Double click on the Recycle Bin icon on your desktop
2. Select “Empty the Recycle Bin” from the File menu
3. Click on Yes to confirm the permanent deletion of the files
Remember that when you “Empty the Recycle Bin”, you are effecting a permanent deletion of your files and they are no longer retrievable
Consider eliminating your temporary and zipped files on a regular schedule. If you actively use the MS Office programs, I would recommend that you search and delete at least monthly.
Please contact your host with any questions. Please also feel free to make any suggestions or contribute a “Unique Technique” Suggestions should be accompanied by your name and title so that I may give the contributor credit.
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