AOMEI Partition Assistant
How to Delete Duplicate Files in A Folder with Easy Methods?
How to delete duplicate files in a folder? Let’s explore the answer together and find more ways to free up space, keeping your PC organized and fast.
By Irene / Updated on July 8, 2025
When you download, move files around, or edit the same file, duplicate files appear. These duplicates can be spread all over your computer in different places. How to delete duplicate files in a folder when you needed? This post will share you the answer.
Try the 2 ways to delete duplicate files in a folder
How can I delete duplicate files in a folder? Here are 2 ways. If you want to find and delete specific files, File Explorer is a suitable choice. However, if you are aim to free up space, deleting duplicate files in a folder via a professional tool is an effective and handy way.
Way 1. Use File Explorer to remove duplicate files in a folder
Using File Explorer to find and delete duplicate files in a folder requires you to manually tying the right file extensions one-by-one and carefully identify the update versions. Therefore, this way is more suitable for small-scale duplicate files finding and removing.
Step 1. Head to the lower-left corner near the Windows icon. Enter "Indexing Options" in the search bar and then tap on "Indexing Options".
Step 2. Click "Modify" and choose "Show all locations". A window will pop up, requesting your login information. Ensure you're using an administrator account while making changes in this place.
Step 3. Verify if all the boxes are ticked under the "Changed selected locations" section. If they are, click "OK," then hit the "Close" button. If not, make sure to tick all the boxes.
Step 4. Simultaneously press the Windows key and the E key on your keyboard to open File Explorer. Finding your files is simpler under your user account. To reach your user account, navigate to Windows (C:), and then pick the Users folder.
Step 5. Click on "Search" in the upper-right corner, and enter the following extensions based on their format.
Step 6. Organize the search results by Name:
• Under the "Panes" section, choose "Preview pane".
• Under the "Layout" section, select "Details".
• In the "Current view" section, click "Group by," and then pick "Name".
• To arrange the files in ascending order, click "Group by," and select "Ascending".
Step 7. Examine the files to find duplicates saved in different locations. Check the "Date modified" column to identify the latest version of each file.
Step 8. After reviewing the files, select the one you want to delete, and then press the DELETE key on your keyboard.
Way 2. Find and remove duplicate files in a folder with a professional tool
If you want to batch delete remove duplicate files in a folder with all kinds of file type, using File Explorer can be tiresome and inefficient. In such case, choosing a professional duplicate files finder is an intelligent idea. AOMEI Partition Assistant for Cleanup can be the ideal tool.
Its Duplicate Files Finder function can quickly scan and remove all the duplicate files on your computer, or you can customize some solutions based on your preferences. Apart from cleaning duplicates, it also supports removing junk files, large files, or other useless data to make room for your storage space.
AOMEI Partition Assistant for CleanupThe Best Windows Disk Partition Manager and PC Optimizer
Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant for Cleanup. Click the "Find Duplicate Files" tab. You can either click "Scan Now" to start the scan of your system C: drive. Or, click "Custom Scan" to manually select paths to be scanned. (Here, we take the "Custom Scan" as an example.)
Step 2. After clicking "Custom Scan", all local and external drives on your PC will be displayed. You can also click the "Add Path" button, and then a browse folder window will pop up. So you can add more paths on this PC, like Desktop, Downloads, and other folder paths.
Step 3. Once necessary paths are added, you can click the "Scan Now" button to start the scan process.
Step 4. The scan process might take time. After the scan is complete, all duplicate files will be listed. You can click the button behind to locate them.
Step 5. You can either manually select duplicate files, or click the "Smart Select" button to automatically select unnecessary duplicate files to delete.
Tips: If the "Smart Select" is ticked, only the oldest duplicate file will be unticked. It means that all duplicate files except the oldest one will be ticked to delete. (The oldest file means the file that was created first. This file will not be deleted. All other duplicate files are conside red copies of the oldest file. )
If you manually select all copies of duplicate files, you will get a pop-up warning window to keep at least one copy of the duplicate files. If you indeed want to delete all copies of duplicate files, you can click "OK" so all copies of duplicate files will be selected to delete.
After unnecessary duplicate files are selected, please click the "Clean Now" button to start the deletion.
Step 6. The deletion might take time. After the process is finished, the selected files will be deleted, and you will get a cleaning completed window displaying how much data you deleted in total.
Conclusion
The shared 2 methods can be the answer of “how to delete duplicate files in a folder?” If you are aim to keep your PC clean and fast, AOMEI Partition Assistant for Cleanup will be the good choice. Except for the mentioned 2 features of the powerful tool, it can even allows to move installed programs to another drive, allocate free space from sufficient partition, easily upgrade to a bigger disk with the cloning feature.
