Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨‍💻? Find out how to check here.

Forum Discussion

Danette5's avatar
Danette5
Helpful | Level 5
3 years ago
Solved

Error message when deleting folders

I have used Dropbox for years and have never had this problem. I'm cleaning up my files and when I try to delete a folder I get this message:

 

There are too many files in one request. Please retry with fewer files.

 

What has changed? How do I go about deleting my folders?

  • Hi Everybody,

     

    Thanks for your feedback here and for notifying us of this issue. The inability to bulk delete may have been a lingering effect of the earlier outage. It should be resolved at this time. Please let us know if that's not the case.

     

    Thanks,

    Ben

69 Replies

Replies have been turned off for this discussion
  • BenDBX's avatar
    BenDBX
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    3 years ago

    Hi pmjboyle,

     

    Are you still unable to delete multiple files? File deletion functionality related to the outage should be fully restored. I can certainly have our team look into it if you are still unable to bulk delete.

     

    If anyone else is still experiencing this, please let me know.

     

    Thanks,

    Ben

  • ricodude's avatar
    ricodude
    Explorer | Level 3
    3 years ago

    Hi Ben

     

    I am getting this issue. I have been re-arranging my folders on Dropbox (and at each step waiting for Dropbox to complete the sync before moving to next step), but there are some folders I cannot copy, move or delete. For some folders I get the message "Too many files ..." and for others I simply get "Couldn't delete ...". Just now I tried this again for a single .gitignore file (all of 6 bytes) and got "Couldn't delete 1 item".

     

    This is all via the Dropbox website. **Extremely** frustrating and makes me seriously doubt the underlying integrity of Dropbox.

     

    Any help appreciated. Ideally with an explanation as to why this is happening (which will hopefully allay my doubts).

     

    Thanks

     

    Richard

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    HI ricodude, could you try switching browsers to see if this helps?

     

    Otherwise, you can try using incognito/private browsing mode without any extensions running?

  • ricodude's avatar
    ricodude
    Explorer | Level 3
    3 years ago

    Hi Jay

     

    I tried deleting one of the folders on both Chrome & Safari and in each case using normal & incognito windows. Same result each time: "Too many files ..."

     

    R.

  • Megan's avatar
    Megan
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hi ricodude, sorry to jump in here! 

     

    Does this happen with all of your files/folders or just with some specific ones?

     

    If you could send me a screenshot of the error message you get on your end, that'd be amazing.

  • ricodude's avatar
    ricodude
    Explorer | Level 3
    3 years ago

    Hi Megan - It has been for some specific ones. I couldn't see any obvious pattern; it's not related to size, no. of files or special characters, so far as I can tell.

     

    This was the case for three specific folders and their contents for last few days up to some minutes ago, however I just tried deleting them again as an example to show you and they deleted fine - so inconsistent.

     

    However their parent folder - which is now empty - still cannot be deleted. Screenshot attached.

     

  • Megan's avatar
    Megan
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Thanks for the speedy response and for the screenshots too ricodude!

     

    Have you tried clearing the cache on your browser? 

     

    It'd also help if you could disable any plug-ins, just to rule that one out too, and make sure they don't interfere. 

  • ricodude's avatar
    ricodude
    Explorer | Level 3
    3 years ago

    Hi Megan

     

    You'll note from my previous replies that I tried using incognito windows in both Chrome & Safari, which would not have had any plugins enabled. I just tried using Firefox with an empty cache & no plugins and this did actually work - i.e. I could delete the empty folder. However I think this is just inconsistent behaviour rather than a causal link.

     

    I'm back to trying to re-organize the folders and there are a whole series of folders that I cannot move within Dropbox - whatever the browser, cache, plugin set up. First Dropbox warns "Moving this folder might take a while" because it has a large number of files. Then it tries moving it and comes back with "Couldn't move 1 item ...".

     

    At this point I am giving up. I cannot use a file system that has inconsistent behaviour and that does not work for some files / folders.

  • Nancy's avatar
    Nancy
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hey ricodude, I’m sorry to hear this. 

     

    Please feel free to share the OS version of your computer, as well as the version of the default browser you’re using, and we’ll check this further.

About Delete, edit, and organize

Solve issues with deleting, editing, and organizing files and folders in your Dropbox account with support from the Dropbox Community.

The Dropbox Community team is active from Monday to Friday. We try to respond to you as soon as we can, usually within 2 hours.

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X, Facebook or Instagram.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!