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Forum Discussion
Delete more than 1000 files at a time
Trying to clean up my Dropbox account of unnecessary files, particularly photos being auto-backed up from my iPhone. I’m using the iPad app, and just spent well over an hour meticulously selecting 1800+ files. Went to hit the Delete button, and noticed it was greyed out. Quick search on Google implies that I simply am not allowed to delete more than 1000 files at one time? Is this correct?
To try and salvage my effort, one thing I could do in bulk was “Star” all of the items. So I figured ok, at the very least, I’ll Star all these selected files and then can go back and select/delete 1000 at a time from there. Nope. From the “Starred” items view, there is no method for selecting multiple items…
So beyond frustrated at having now wasted a couple hours selecting files for deletion, and now have to start over, from scratch, being sure to only select 1000 at a time…
UPDATE: I’ve since learned that by logging into the Dropbox site via a browser, I can view Starred items and select multiple Starred items at once and delete them. However in doing so, I’ve also learned that of the 1800+ files I had selected and tried to “Star” earlier, only 600 items were actually Starred for some reason. Meaning roughly 1200 files I had manually selected earlier will simply need to be re-selected again… 😖
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey Marcus D.9, thanks for reaching out to the Dropbox Community.
And thanks for sharing your experience with us and keeping us updated on the process.
Were you eventually able to delete the files?
We do appreciate your feedback on this as well and I have passed your comments along to our team.
Thanks.
Hi, Hannah. Just to reiterate my experience:
- I marked ~1800 files for deletion
- Realized I could only delete 1000 at a time
- Opted to “Star” the 1800 files
- Navigated to Starred items on desktop browser
- Verified that I could indeed select/delete Starred items in bulk on browser
- However noticed only 600 of the originally selected 1800 items were Starred
So while I think I now understand the intricacies of the system and what I can and can’t do, I still unfortunately need to go through and manually select files again for deletion. And this was just a first pass, as I have thousands of items I intend to go through and selectively delete those which are no longer needed. I just now understand that I can only do this 1000 items at a time.
