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

Forum Discussion

mmo's avatar
mmo
Helpful | Level 6
10 months ago
Solved

How to delete a Dropbox folder from the Windows file system?

I recently had to change my email address. Trying to adapt that in my dropbox account I accidentaly created me a second drop-box account. After finding out about my mistake I took a second attempt an...
Delete
desktop
windows
  • mmo's avatar
    mmo
    9 months ago

    After another search I found a link that this terrific forum SW does not allow me to paste (claiming that it contains invalid HTML ||-( - it's a link to MS' knowledge base) and the command

    "rd /s /q C:\$Recycle.bin"

    mentioned there and executed in an admin shell finally did the trick.

mmo's avatar
mmo
Helpful | Level 6
9 months ago

Second attempt, after having completed registration to the forum after locating that darn "registration code". It also arrived in an email but only a few minutes later...

The non-visible part for "selective sync" on top shows ALL folders underneath "C:\Users\mmo\Dropbox" as checked.

Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
9 months ago

Hi mmo, are you able to reboot into Safe Mode in Windows and attempt to delete the Dropbox folder from the Recycle Bin there?

  • mmo's avatar
    mmo
    Helpful | Level 6
    9 months ago

    I rebooted my box in Safe Mode but even with that these folders are undeletable. When I select "Empty Recycle Bin" I see the dialog "Preparing files to delete" and underneath  "Discovered items: " counting up to ~3GB. Subsequently the dialog header changes to "Deleting" but then the dialog almost immediately closes without actually removing those 2 folders. :-(

  • mmo's avatar
    mmo
    Helpful | Level 6
    9 months ago

    After another search I found a link that this terrific forum SW does not allow me to paste (claiming that it contains invalid HTML ||-( - it's a link to MS' knowledge base) and the command

    "rd /s /q C:\$Recycle.bin"

    mentioned there and executed in an admin shell finally did the trick.

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!