Windows 10: Unlocking locked files help

Opened folder and was presented with multiple documents that had a "locked padlock" covering part of the file icon. Also the following message when I attempted to open the file:
"You need permission to perform this action."
"You require permission from "everyone" to make changes to this file."
I am the administrator and have no user named "everyone".
I do not have the password.
How do I unlock these files?
Thanks, Cosmo

:)

 

MY N96 VIDEO & AUDIO FILES LOCKED.

hi, my preloaded n96 video and audio files are locked after i press the reset option. how to unlock the files. please help.

 

Windows 10 automatically locks the unlocked BitLocker encrypted USB drive

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, it didn't fix my issue. First of all, there is no "turn off auto bit lock", but there is "turn off auto-unlock" or "turn on auto-unlock", and my settings show "auto-unlock" is turned off. Secondly, I don't want my
USB drive to "auto-unlock", but I do want it to stay "unlocked" after I manually unlock it. However, the problem I am having now is that when I unlock the USB drive and open a file, then after being idle for a while, Windows will automatically lock the drive,
so I cannot save the changes I have made to the file until I unlock the drive again.

 

Do you mean a padlock that looks like this?





That means the file is encrypted with EFS encryption. Encrypt or Decrypt a Folder or File

If you didn't backup the encryption keys then the files are not accessible and you can not get them back. If the padlock looks different please post a picture so we can understand the issue.

As an aside "Everyone" means just that - any user - you don't have a specific user called "Everyone".

 

Ix07,
Yes, that's exactly what it looks like.
Files belonged to a former employee. I am curious why her user ID didn't show up.
Is there anyway short of reformatting to delete these files as there is a total of 230G?
Thanks, Cosmo

 

Maybe taking ownership of them would work. Have a look at this tutorial: Add Take Ownership to Context Menu in Windows 10

Good luck ...

 

If the former employee's log in is still available you may have more control if you can log in as them (you may need to reset their password and promote them to an administrator first).