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"One or more pages are in use and could not be deleted" - AGAIN.

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
December 6, 2012
47 replies
197430 views

Open a PDF file.
Save it under a different name
Try to delete a page

You'll get this error:

"One or more pages are in use and could not be deleted"

I've had this billions of times now and the only solution that works 100% of the time is closing and re-opening the file. This leads me to believe it's something with "locking" the file while saving, but not unlocking it after done saving.

GET THIS FIXED PLEASE because it's annoying LOADS and LOADS of people.

As evident by the 7000+ search results for the exact phrase "One or more pages are in use and could not be deleted".

And that's just the part of the userbase that actually reports the problem.

There are several topics about this issue, some marked as "solved" erroneously.

Note, I'm a paying customer, use Photoshop/Illustrator/Dreamweaver/Fireworks and Bridge during my daily work, and have had this issue for months and months across several different computers (two different workplaces, and at home) and have ran into this time and again, when all I want to do is cut a PDF into several smaller PDFs.

Closing and re-opening your program because you're unable to fix this issue is NOT ACCEPTABLE. It's THE WORST kind of user experience, as this issue is the ONLY reason I use Acrobat at all, and it can't even do that.

Cheers,

- Dirk

Ps.: Sorry, I'm very frustrated running into this time and again, and then having to wade through thick mud (your site is a UX nightmare) to report this issue, which has been report oodles of times on this board before.

Correct answer a_C_student11733502

For me - using Acrobat Pro X on Windows 7 - this problem went away when I updated Acrobat Pro to the latest release (Help > Check for Updates).

Show previous replies

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Margaret30146332zggh

Participant

I got the same issue. What does "in use" mean? I have the file open, so all of it is "in use." What if you don't want the file on your desktop? I am on a Mac, BTW. I am not using Dropbox, either. I saved it to the Adobe Cloud and this happened. I saved the file to the my Documents folder and it happened.

I find it a bit concerning that nowhere in this thread is there an Adobe support person responding to this issue. Kind of a pricey subscription, so this makes me think hard about my choices in terms of software.

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Jlep12

Participant

I had success with deleting one page at a time only

TaylorMadeAmja

Known Participant

Oh, that is an encouraging suggestion! I’ll give that a try! Thanks!

Sent from my iPhone

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joes26459673

Participant

Yes - I agree. This issue has wasted so much time for me. There's no fix other than (sometimes) closing and reopening and then deleting the page

T

Tom29182836a17z

Participant

Do you have the Preview pane turned on in Windows Explorer? Turn this off if you have it on. The preview pane causes a lot of problems because it locks files and prevents them from being deleted or modified by other programs.

phillipp78508477

Participant

Extract pages and check delete

A

Artie61

Participant

Does this work ? is it confirmed ? anybody ? I just had this again when I had 4 instances each with 3 tabs of acrobat opened had to shut them all down before it would unlock the page I wanted deleted it doesnt happen all the time but BAM it happened at the worst time , I was frustrated I searched this board and found this small and inconspicious post Thanks if it works

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Alain28354103d9ju

Participant

Even if it works (I cannot test it right now) it is not normal to be forced to rely on such a workaround.

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Dave27787276k3o4

Participant

I have been dealing with this problem for at least 7 years now. IT NEVER GOES AWAY---PLEASE FIX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

phillipp78508477

Participant

Extract pages you want to remove and check delete box

TaylorMadeAmja

Known Participant

Right, that's the goal but that is what throws the error message! We are unable to delete the pages. 😵‍

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anna24416169f5uc

Participant

I called Adobe support because I run into this issue multiple times a week – we started a screen share and support had me close out of every single program besides Acrobat that I had open (not just Adobe but all programs), and eventually, I was able to delete the page I wanted gone. Support said the page I wanted to delete really was "in use" elsewhere, which I don't understand – I didn't have the PDF or any of its pieces/elements open in any other program. This also isn't a great solution ("close every program you have open every time you run into this issue!"), so any other quick solution to this would be super helpful. This wastes a lot of time and gets me frustrated as it happens so often. I only started experiencing this issue a year or two ago seemingly after an update (anybody else?).

TaylorMadeAmja

Known Participant

I was on a Adobe Support phone call a few months ago. They said they could not fix this exact trouble I was having (select a chunk of pages to Extract and tic the "Delete Pages After Extracting") -- but they were able to find a work-around which was to open the PDF in Acrobat and then from Acrobat, export it all over again. I can't remember exactly which export option we did, but the "new" PDF I was able to delete the chunk of pages and avoid the warning.

Lastly, I've said it a couple times previous to this response, but someone else shared that dragging the PDF to their Desktop allowed them to avoid the error. I tried a test document and I also got it to work as intended while on my Desktop. YAY! So, that's my plan for the forseeable future.

ETA: my test file worked, the file that I actually needed to split for work today did NOT work. I saved to Desktop, I've tried exporting so many ways. Nope, nothing. <sob> I can't find a rhyme or reason why it's not working.

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Linus38

Participant

You are perfectly right, moving the PDF file to the desktop makes the delete action again possible.

The error "One or more pages are in use and could not be deleted" is so old that it is unbelievable that Adobe never corrected it. May be they have fired all the good programmers they had to save money!

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michaelcnolan

Participant

A combination of solutions from people in the comments below:

It happens when you try to delete pages from a redacted document. And yes, it's still happening in 2022, 10 years after the first post, at least on MacOS.

It seems to mostly work to close, move the document to the desktop, and reopen, as long as your desktop isn't being backed up in Dropbox.