Finding and Deleting Duplicate files

Unless you have been very disciplined with your file system on your computer, you may find that over time you have stored multiple copies of the same file, but in different folders on your computer. Unless intentional, this is using up storage space and is difficult to solve without some help.

Perhaps the biggest culprits for duplicate files are our photos. Because they are transferred from a camera or phone, we could transfer the same photo, multiple times and into different folders even, but thankfully there is software that compares a files name, its weight and dates, to find double ups that you can then delete if you wish.




Refer to our article in the February 2015 on CCleaner and download and install this program if you haven’t already. This program also has a simple tool you can for finding and managing duplicate files. Once installed, open the CCleaner and click on the tools menu found on the left hand side of the program.





Click the “Duplicate Finder” menu. We recommend you remove the tick from the “File size under” option. If you are looking for duplicates in a specific location, such as your images folder for example, click the “Add” button and then the “Browse” button to select that folder. Searching for duplicates in a specific location will make the process quicker.





To start the process click the “Search” button and wait for the process to finish – how long this takes depends on the number of files and folders on your computer. Once it has completed, duplicate files will be grouped together showing the name, weight and location of each file. The columns on this report can be made wider by dragging the vertical border between the headings.





Now you will need to work through the list and click the tick box for each file you want to delete, leaving all the ones you want to keep unticked. If your list is big, you don’t actually have to process the entire list all at once. Once you have selected the files to delete, click the “Delete Selected” button. Some files that appear in this search could be files that are required for your computer to run – be careful not to delete any files unless they are ones that you have created