Box Cloud Duplicate Finder

Requirements

This guide requires the user to have a stable web browser installed on their computer, and signed up for an account on Box, as well as an account on Cloud Duplicate Finder website.

How to Clean up Duplicate Files, Images, Photos, Music and Videos from Box

• Navigate to the Cloud Duplicate Finder website and sign in to your account, which can be created on the site for free. This website employs the industry standard SSL encryption; which serves as a mark of trust for users that their data is in safe hands and no one (including the team at Cloud Duplicate Finder) can ever access it. Users are recommended to use the latest version of their web browser for optimum results.

• Now switch to the Box tab. Click Add New Box Account and you will be redirected to a page where you will have to enter the login credentials associated with your Box account.

  

• The browser will now redirect to Cloud Duplicate Finder and show up your Box Cloud folder structure on the left-hand side. One of the best features about Cloud Duplicate Finder is that it will almost instantly load up your Box drive data, no matter how huge it is!

• Simply select the target areas for the duplicate scan by clicking the checkbox for each folder you want to scan.

• The next step involves choosing the filetype(s) for the scan. We will briefly describe each of the 4 possible scenarios here for your ease.

  1. Clean up Duplicate Documents from Box
     If you want to search for duplicate documents in Box, you need to click Custom (below the folder structure) and select Documents. This sets up the scan to look for duplicate documents. Click Apply Filter to save the filter you’ve selected.

  2. Clean up Duplicate Photos from Box
     To remove duplicate photos from Box, simply select Custom | Images. Just as you’ve guessed by now, this option will narrow down the scan towards images only (JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, SVG, BMP etc) and bring up results more quickly than a universal duplicate file scan for Box.

  3. Clean up Duplicate Music and Videos from Box
     If duplicate media content such as music and videos is what you’re wanting to scan your Box account for, select Custom | Music and Videos. Again, the scan will be over much sooner than a complete file scan.

  4. Clean up ALL Duplicates from Box
     This is the route you need to take if you think there are duplicates of multiple types in your Box Cloud drive. Please note the All Files option is selected by default. Now you’re all set for a powerful scan that will target files of all types.

• Now click Find Duplicates to launch the Box duplicates scan.

• Once the scan is over, you will be provided information on the number of duplicates detected as well as the space they are occupying in a pop up message. Click OK and you will now be able to view the entire list of all the duplicates detected along with handy details for each file like name, size, date of creation and path.

• Click the Select Duplicates button to choose between retaining either the oldest or newest file for each duplicate group. Please note that all the items which have their checkbox selected will basically be moved to the Trash or to a folder on the home location of Box Cloud, while other items with their checkbox unselected will be retained.

• The final step involves clicking the Select Action button and choosing between the Move to trash and Move to folder options.

• Once all the duplicates have been processed, Cloud Duplicate Finder will show the updated status from the drawer on the left.

  

• As soon as Cloud Duplicate Finder makes a change to your Box account, Box will start to replicate those changes to all computers this particular Box account is signed in.

• Navigate to the Trash section in Box where you will find all the files that have been deleted by the duplicate scan. Select all the files and then click the Delete button on the top-right corner of the screen and click Okay in the prompt to signal your confirmation. Once the action has been successfully concluded, all the Box duplicates detected by Cloud Duplicate Finder will be permanently purged, and you would have freed up a significant chunk of your Box storage volume.