This is how to DEL .pdf files that are STUCK on your Desktop -
Whether the files are PDF or anything else, a strategy would be the same. And not just for Windows 10, but any version.
Let’s assume that they are all in the same folder (since you would simply repeat this in each folder. I hope there aren’t too many.)
Your life will be simpler if the only ones in that folder are your nasty targets. Assuming that you wish to delete ALL these files in that folder, do the following: use the CMD prompt.
Click Windows_key+r and open the Run window. The command to enter is cmd, and click OK. You will get a command window. At the prompt use the cd command to navigate to the folder of interest. You might have to go one folder at a time, such as cd C:\ then cd Users, the cd <your username>, then cd Documents, etc. Then you will be able to use the DEL command. You could enter del /? to see its help info, how it can be used. To delete ALL the files in the folder enter del *. Of course you could have just deleted the folder, even in the File Explorer.
If you do NOT wish to remove all of them, you need a way to select the ones you wish. If there is some common word or sequence of text in the names desired, you can say del *common_word* where that 1st asterisk matches anything before the common_word and the 2nd one matches anything after. If there are spaces in filenames it is more complicated and I would recommend an alternative using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) available in Windows 10. It has a better tool.
If you have turned on the WSL and have Cortana search in your taskbar, click the search icon and enter bash. The bash on Ubuntu on Windows app will offered. Click that and get a bash window. Yep, you are using Linux. Don’t be afraid.
The folder you start in is a Linux folder. At the prompt enter cd /mnt/c. Similar to before at the cmd prompt. Now navigate to the folder desired, as before. cd Users, cd <your username>, then cd Documents, etc. to the desired folder. Now you can use the ls command to see all the files in the folder if you wish. To delete the files after seeing and selecting each one in the folder enter rm -i at the prompt. The system will present each file (usually alphabetically, but in sort order), and if you wish to delete, enter y. If not, enter n. Again, I hope you do not have too many. You can see the description of the rm command by entering rm —help at the prompt.
Again, there are more efficient ways to do this if one knows bash wildcards to specify the filenames. If the filenames you wish to delete have some distinguishing characteristic one can write a single command (really in either Windows cmd, or bash) to select the files to operate on. Too much for this answer. Good luck.
This allowed you to delete existing files with excessively long names, mostly because you did not have to enter the names. The system showed you the file and you said, yes delete. There is also a rename capability in both Windows and Linux. It is ren in Windows (enter ren /? at the command prompt to see how it works) or mv in Linux. In both cases the tricky part is getting the system to loop through all the filenames. One uses a for loop in both cases, but, again it is the use of wildcards to specify the filenames for expansion which is the power. (In Linux, mv has an interactive form, so one could rename files to a manageable shorter name.) Without some idea of the form of these filenames of yours, the one-by-one interactive removal if you don’t want to delete all in the folder is simplest.
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