How To Find Duplicate Folders

IDM PowerTips

Unnecessary and unwanted duplicate files can eat up valuable system disk space. This power tip will evidence you lot how to apace and safely eliminate unwanted indistinguishable files from your organisation with the powerful Discover Duplicates feature in UltraCompare Professional!

The objective of Find Duplicates is uncomplicated:

ane. Find whatsoever files inside the folders you specify, then
2. Compare the files against each other to determine which files are duplicates of one another.

Open Find Duplicates dialog

To commencement your duplicate search, become to File -> Find Duplicates or click the Find Duplicates button on the main toolbar. The Detect Duplicates dialog volition open up, as shown below.

Find Duplicates screenshot

Cull folders to search

The Find Duplicates dialog is intuitive and easy to use. The first footstep is to specify which folders should exist searched for duplicates. Yous tin can either manually type in the file paths or apply the browse button ("...") to scan to and select your folders. If y'all wish to choose a folder from an FTP site, click the FTP Open push button. Click the "Add" push button to confirm your selection and add it to the list below. You tin add together equally many or as few folders as y'all want to search for duplicates.

Find Duplicates screenshot

Set your duplicate criteria

What is a indistinguishable file? Well, you tin can tell UltraCompare what criteria to use when evaluating whether a file is a duplicate or not. The following iv criteria are bachelor:

Name
Obviously this specifies that duplicates volition be evaluated based on the file name. This is checked past default and includes the full file name including the extension, and so "my-text-file.txt.bak" will not exist considered a name indistinguishable of "My-text-file.txt" (unless "Ignore file extensions" is enabled in your Ignore Options - discussed later).

Size
Checking this item will cause UltraCompare to check file sizes when searching for duplicates. Click on this item to (optionally) fix a minimum and maximum file size for the indistinguishable search. Any file with a size outside of the range you set volition be completely ignored by the Find Duplicates search. This is especially useful for performance if you are doing a content-based search where you want to avoid checking the contents of very big files.

Date
Checking this item volition cause UltraCompare to check file timestamps when searching for duplicates. Click on this particular to (optionally) set whether UltraCompare checks the Engagement Created, the Date Modified, or both (default).

Content
Checking this detail will cause UltraCompare to browse and evaluate each file'south unabridged contents when checking for duplicates. This browse uses the aforementioned technique every bit a fast binary compare. Circumspection: scanning file contents may require substantially more than system resources and more fourth dimension depending upon the amount and size of files to be searched.

Gear up any ignore options

You tin can further refine your indistinguishable search with ignore options. You can configure these options directly beneath the duplicate criteria settings. Click on an ignore option grouping in the listbox to the left to activate that group'southward specific options. The following groups of ignore options are available:

Advanced
The "Advanced" ignore options are self-explanatory and useful to avoid deleting important Windows/arrangement files.

Include Filter
This allows you lot to restrict what files are included in the search. This uses a Windows-based file filter, and so if y'all wanted to search but .txt files, you lot would specify "*.txt" (without the quotes) hither. Additionally, you can specify file names with wildcards, for example: "ultra*" (without the quotes) volition search only files with names showtime with "ultra". If you add two filters and so only files matching both filters volition be searched. So the previous two examples would cause Find Duplicates to search only files beginning with "ultra" and ending in ".txt".

Exclude Filter
Exclude filters work exactly the opposite as include filters. Type whatsoever file extension or file name (with or without the "*" wildcard) you want to exclude from being searched.

Exclude Folders
This ignore selection allows you to set filters for folders to exclude from searching for duplicates. For example, if y'all want to exclude all .svn folders, you could add "*.svn". If y'all want to exclude all folders named "bak", and so you would but type "bak" (without the quotes) and add it. Note that this is a filter, so all folders with names matching the filter will be excluded.

Run the search

One time you've specified your folders for searching, and you've set your duplicate criteria and ignore options, click "First" to initialize the search. UltraCompare volition jump to the Results Report page, and progress will be tracked in the progress bar at the bottom of the dialog.

Delete duplicates institute

Once the search is complete, you lot will run into a list of all duplicates in the left cavalcade labeled "Duplicates Establish". The number of duplicates found follows the file name in parentheses. For example, "file.txt (4)" indicates that at that place are 4 files named "file.txt" that be amidst the folders y'all specified, and based upon the criteria/ignore options you fix.

Tip: Don't desire to delete duplicates without visually inspecting them first? Ctrl + Click whatever ii (or three) files in the "Duplicates Locations" listing, then right-click and select "Compare Selected" to open a text compare of those files!

Find Duplicates screenshot

Past default, no duplicates are marked for deletion. You must specify which duplicates are to be deleted. To do this, click on a duplicate in the left column and y'all will meet the full list of duplicate files for this entry immediately to the right. This listing also includes size, date, and attributes for each file. Click the checkbox in forepart of the file path for each duplicate you want UltraCompare to delete. If you wish to keep a file, go out the checkbox unchecked.

Once yous've gone through your list of duplicates and double-checked the files you wish to delete and those you wish to keep, click "Delete Checked". That'due south information technology - specified duplicates have at present been removed!