orphaned owner files (~$...)

[Steve Paul]

I have a network share that is used to access word & excel 2003 docs by 50
people. Frequently users try to open a file & are told it is in use by
another user, but the user mentioned does not have the file opened (sometimes
somebody else has the file opened & sometimes nobody has it opened) When I
do a search of the network share for the hidden "owner files" that Word
creates, I find hundreds of them. As a test, I pick a real file with an
orphaned hidden owner file & I open it, but do not get any mesasge about
someone having the file open already. Should I delete these "orphaned files"
? Also, is there some kind of time limit as to how long these "owner files"
will "lock" a file as being in use ?

thanks

 

[Bob I]

I periodically search and flush anything with a date stamp of yesterday.
HTH.