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Forum Discussion
How can I find the total number of files in a folder?
Boy, am I disappointed with Dropbox. I assumed that each folder would display the number of files in that folder, without me jumping through all kinds of hoops. This seems not to be the case, however...
Are you referring to the Dropbox website or the folder on your computer. If it's the folder, use the features of your opreating system for that. If it's the Dropbox website, select all the files in the folder and the count will be shown in the upper right.
Rich by "select all the files in the folder", did you mean to say "to see number of files in a folder, you need to click every one of them individually"? How is that an answer?
I must be misunderstanding something here, can you explain?
Walter
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffCan you not click the box to the left of the 'Name' header when navigating your file-structure qqq1?
While we're at it, kindly note that you could also use the 'Ctrl+A' shortcut when in a folder of yours to select all the files within it.
I hope this helps!
Walterthanks for the quick response.
1. When clicking the square next to folder name, it just shows a larger "folder" icon on the right side, nowhere does it show count of files in that folder; when clicking multiple such squares, it does show how many folders I have clicked, but not how many files they contain.
Am I supposed to see file count anywhere when clicking on a folder? Do I have some wrong/different interface from other users (I'm on a Business plan)?
2. Ctrl-A inside a folder does indeed select all items and show their count... but how does it answer the question? The question is, given a list of folders with arbitrary depth, how does one see number of files in those folders and all their subfolders (what "size" metric is applied to now, but count rather that size)?
- Walter
Ah, I see now - thanks for the clarifications qqq1!
In regards to your first point, I was referring to the default 'Name' header when navigating your folders - not a particular folder. As a matter of fact, what you described is the normal behavior.
As per your second point, I was merely suggesting this so as to get an overview of the folders/files you'd be selecting.
I understand your point now though (as you'd like to calculate the files' count within a more complex folder-structure) so I'll make a note of it in my internal feedback report to our devs for future improvements on our service.
In the meantime, you could use your computer's OS to calculate the files within your folders - assuming that you have our desktop app installed that is.
I know it's not much, yet, I sure hope this helps to some extent.
Let us know if you come up with any additional questions!
I can't believe after all this time and so many complaints that DropBox have still not fixed this fundamental flaw. It's been going on for years. So what Walter is saying as recently as two weeks ago is that the only way to get a full file count of an arbitrary folder containing sub folders is to download the files to a computer. I have a 65GB folder containg 17,000 photos and I want to check that I have the right number of files in the cloud before I delete them from the computer they were on. Firstly, I do not have sufficient free disk space to download them and even if I did I am in Africa with very poor (and expensive) bandwidth. What am I meant to do ? This is ridiculous.
