Because a Folder or File is Open in another Program ???

I'm sorry you are so frustrated by this; completely understandable though! I have had it happen to me rarely, but nearly always it turned out that the file was in fact connected to some running program.

One thought: I never turn off my computer. Very rarely something goes awry, so that when I launch a program the user-interface doesn't appear, but I see that it is running once I launch the task manager. In these rare situations the solution is to reboot.

I am guessing you are seeing this behavior across several reboots, but wanted to confirm that assumption.

Thanks, Tom and Sepiana.

I don't know if it has any bearing or not, but it has been days since the machine was shut down or restarted.

I read and reread that link Sepiana provided, plus all of the comments; there are numerous varied solutions; if my problem persists, I will just try them in order until I find the one that works.

For the immediate time being, I am going to see if a restart cures the situation.

Let us know how it goes. Hopefully one of those suggestions will work.  Keeping my fingers crossed!

Just because you have no programs running on your computer doesn't mean nothing is running. Open Windows Task Manager and you can quickly see how many processes are running. Some of those processes may be keeping files open and hence not allowing you to work with them. Simply waiting can resolved the problem, as the process completes what it was doing with the file and then releases it. A reboot will generally fix the issue.

This is getting ridiculous.....

I found a folder that I had misnamed, with a hyphen where I always put an underscore; there was absolutely nothing in any way related to that folder open anywhere in any program, and had not been in days.

I brought up the rename box (F2), fixed the name to suit, and clicked "Okay" and then that hateful "Etc., etc., cannot be done because a folder or a file in it is open in another program" pops up again.

After numerous attempts, I came back to this thread and clicked the link that Sepiana provided, bound and determined to fix this once and for all.

I found that check-box that it said to un-check and it was already unchecked.

I tried all of the other solutions offered in the comments section.

I thought I may have been onto something when I read of several being able to fix the problem by finding and stopping "WSearch" in the task manager; I opened the task manager and did find "WSearch"; but, when I right-clicked it and selected "Stop", it always gave me a warning that the process could not be stopped and my request was denied.

No matter what I tried, I could not rename that silly folder.

I restarted and then was able to rename the folder on the first attempt.

This annoyance really slows up production, as all open programs must be shut down and then re-launched.

From what I gather, there does not seem to be a genuine fix for this problem.

Well........, I may have stumbled upon at least one of the culprits that is causing me all this grief.

A little bird pecked me in the head and told me that, at least in most instances, whenever it would refuse to let me rename a folder (and sometimes a file), that folder just happened to be the last place I had saved anything to from Elements.

Just to check this out further, I picked a random folder, saved an image to that folder, closed the image, and then attempted to rename the folder; it would not allow the folder to be renamed.
I went back into Elements, saved a random file from Elements to a different folder, and was instantly able to rename or do whatever to the first folder that it had just refused to allow.
I tried this several times with different folders and each time I saved something from Elements to a folder, it would not allow any further manipulation of that folder until I saved something to somewhere else.

Although a bit annoying, it is a whole lot less aggravating to just save a file to somewhere else and then be able to proceed with my work, than to have to close half-a-dozen open programs, restart the machine, and then try to remember just where I was at and what I was doing after a restart.


I didn't think to see what would happen if I just closed Elements to see if that eliminated the problem; I will try to remember to try that the next time.

Thanks for reading and I hope these confusing situations I keep getting into help others who may find themselves in a similar situation.