How To Remove Temporary Files

There are a couple of different variations of temporary files. There were those which are created by programs that run on your operating system, and you also have Temporary Internet Files from every Internet browsing. In this article, were going to discuss those temporary files, or temp files, which can reside on your computer and can take up space and decrease the performance of your computer.

The temp files can have a variation of extensions, most commonly computer programs will create a file with an extension of .tmp. What can be confusing of temp files, is that Windows creates a temporary file with this same extension for all programs.

There are a couple ways to decipher which program created a particular temp file, it is usually not easily identifiable. The best cases when you’re using a program such as Microsoft Word, Windows will save the temporary file with the same name you saved it as. Also, if the program you are utilizing stores its temporary files in a folder within the program files folder, then most likely those belong to that particular program.

in this article, I want to briefly discuss why are these files created and how to delete them from your hard drive.

Why are Temp Files Created?

When programs, such as Microsoft Word or Excel, open a file, a temporary copy of that file is traditionally created. For program such as this, opening data, the TMP is created usually for backup purposes. You will notice a setting in the programs which allow them to autosave. TMP files are also created for disaster recovery purposes; such as when an application crashes or your operating system freezes, when you get the program functioning properly once again, you can usually reopen the respective files.

In most cases, these TMP files are typically deleted when the application closes. However, many of these are left behind regardless if the program was properly closed or not. There can be many reasons for which this is occurring, including programming errors, corrupted , an error in managing the file from RAM and virtual disk space.

How to Remove TMP Files

When it comes to removing, or deleting temporary files, you have a couple of options. You can manually clean out your temporary directory, or you may elect to install a piece of software that would do it for you automatically.

This is a quick and easy way to get rid of TMP files which may be affecting performance, cluttering up your desktop, or taking up valuable disk space.

Regardless of which operating system version you have, let it be Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7, it is necessary to frequently clean out your temporary file folders. Utilizing Windows Vista as an example, here are the steps you can take to clean out the temp folder in Windows. Note that this process can be followed on most operating systems.

1. Click on Start, type the following in the search box, and tap the Enter key on your keyboard: %temp%


2. This command will open your temporary files folder which Windows Vista has designated as the computer’s Temporary folder. These are folders and files, as discussed above, that Windows needed at one time but are no longer useful. Everything in this folder is safe to delete.


3. To remove individual folders or files, hold down your Ctrl key while left-clicking on each item you want delete. Release the Ctrl key when you’re finished.


4. To delete these items, simply tap your keyboard’s Delete key, or click Delete from the Organize drop-down menu. At this point, you will probably be prompted to confirm you wish to Delete Multiple Items. Click Yes to confirm.


5. If you’d instead like to remove all files and folders from the temp directory, click on the Organize button, choose Select All from the menu If you’re prompted that there are hidden files in this folder, just click OK to bypass the message. A few hidden files hanging out in the Temp folder probably aren’t important enough to worry about.


6. To delete these items, tap your Delete key or or click Delete from the Organize drop-down menu


7. As previously, you will probably be prompted to confirm you wish to Delete Multiple Items. Click Yes to confirm.