Okay, I figured out what you did, once I found your
Calendar Disaster thread.
When you made the original backup using the
Export > Calendar Archive… command in Calendar's
File menu, the
Save dialog that opened had
Applications as the current default
Save location.
This location is not intrinsic to Calendar's Export function. Case in point: when I retraced your footsteps as outlined in the Calendar Disaster post, the
Save dialog defaulted to my
Documents folder.
I believe that in any application, if you're opening a particular
Save or
Open dialog
for the first time, the default location is most recent location where you saved or opened
any file. The point is, Calendar.app has no built-in mechanism directing exported data to the Applications folder; the
Save dialog for your initial export just happened to be pointing there. Following that initial Save, though, the application remembers it and defaults to it automatically. So you've been backing up to a less-than-ideal location. It would be much better to back up to a location somewhere within your Home folder, e.g. Documents.
But to answer your specific question: to move rather than copy the files you want to delete that are currently in the Applications folder, hold down the Command key while dragging them to the desired location.
