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Vanessa P.6's avatar
Vanessa P.6
New member | Level 2
8 years ago
Solved

Tons of duplicate photos

I have a TON of duplicate photos on my computer & dropbox. I delted some off my computer directly but when I sync with dropbox, dropbox put them all back on my laptop.

I'm wondering if I have all my photos on my laptop, delete ALLLLLL the photos from dropbox (by logging into the cloud version), then cleanup my photos on my hard drive - when I sync will they all be uploaded to dropbox? Or will it work backwards? Like will it delete the files off my hard drive.

Please help! I've got almost 30,000 photos on my hard drive and on dropbox. I need to get these cleaned up so I don't have 8 of the same picture, it's very frustrating!

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  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    8 years ago
    You can also delete the duplicate files from the Dropbox folder on your machine, and those changes will sync up to the site, which would be easier than deleting from the site directly.

5 Replies

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  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    8 years ago
    Hi Vanessa, if you delete the photos from the Dropbox site, then the images will be deleted from all other devices automatically.
     
    However, you can delete the duplicates from the Dropbox site, and then the duplicates would be removed from all devices instead. Is this possible on your side?
  • Vanessa P.6's avatar
    Vanessa P.6
    New member | Level 2
    8 years ago

    If I delete from my local drive and then resync with dropbox it shows back up on my computer/hard drive.

    There is no way I can manually go through all these files and delete duplicates from the dropbox site online. I'm trying to use software on my physical hard drive.

    I guess what i'm asking is if I delete everything from teh dropbox site (web based site), then sync it with my hard drive (the dropbox on my physical computer) will it delete everything off my computer, or will my files upload to the website?

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    8 years ago
    As mentioned, it will delete the files from all machines linked to your account, since the cloud is the ‘main’ storage area. Any changes there are reflected elsewhere.
     
    When you say ‘resync’, do you mean to run the desktop app manually? If it’s running while you’re doing the deletions from the site, the syncing and the deletions will happen almost immediately on your computer.
  • Vanessa P.6's avatar
    Vanessa P.6
    New member | Level 2
    8 years ago

    So the only option is to delete all these 10,000 duplicates from dropbox website directly???? That will take a lifetime. :(

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    8 years ago
    You can also delete the duplicate files from the Dropbox folder on your machine, and those changes will sync up to the site, which would be easier than deleting from the site directly.

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