Bulk File Operations

Reorganising 200 files one at a time is tedious. Drive lets you select many at once and move, delete, restore, or force-delete them in a single action. This guide covers how to select things, what bulk actions are available, and the limits to know.

Selecting items

Every file and folder row has a checkbox at the start. Click a checkbox to select that item; click again to deselect.

You can also:

• Click the header checkbox to select every item visible in the current view (the current page).
• Shift-click another row's checkbox to select a contiguous range — useful when sorting by date or size to grab a block of items.
• Click any row body (not the checkbox) to navigate into the folder or open the file menu — this doesn't change selection.

When at least one item is selected, a bulk action bar appears at the top of the file list showing the count of selected items and the available actions. The same bar appears in Trash when you select trashed items, with restore and force-delete actions instead.

Selecting across pages

The file list paginates when there are many items. The header checkbox by default selects only what's visible on the current page.

If you genuinely need to act on every item in the folder — say you want to move every file in a 4,000-file folder — there's a "Select all 4,000 items" link that appears next to the bulk bar after you've ticked the header checkbox. Click it and the selection expands to include the entire folder, not just the current page.

This server-side select-all uses a single API call to fetch the full ID list, then applies the bulk action across all of them. Be deliberate when you click — selecting and trashing 4,000 items is a real operation, not just a visual flourish.

Bulk actions

With items selected, the bulk action bar offers:

Move

Click Move and a folder picker opens. Pick a destination folder, click Move here, and every selected file and folder relocates to that destination.

A few rules:

• You can't move items into themselves or into one of their own descendants.
• Moving a folder moves everything inside.
• Public share links on moved files keep working.
• Permissions on shared folders apply to where you move things — moving a private file into a shared folder makes it visible to the team.

Move to Trash

Click Move to Trash and every selected item goes to Trash. Standard 30-day retention applies. See Trash and File Restoration.

The bulk bar shows a confirmation dialog before doing anything destructive. The confirmation lists the count of items, the count of folders within them, and a rough byte total so you know what you're about to bin.

Restore (Trash view only)

When you're in the Trash view, the bulk bar shows Restore as an option for selected items. Click it and every selected item moves back to its original folder. Subfolders restore recursively.

If multiple items would restore to the same name in the same destination, the second one becomes (2) to keep both copies. This is the same logic as upload-side same-name handling.

Delete forever (Trash view only)

In the Trash view, the bulk bar also offers Delete forever. Click it and every selected item is permanently removed — bytes released to the pool, public links broken for good, no recovery.

You'll see a confirmation prompt with the count and total size before the action commits. The prompt makes you type the word "delete" or click a confirmation button — we want this to be a deliberate action, not a fingertip mistake.

Limits

Bulk operations have safety caps:

• Up to 5,000 items per bulk request. If you try to bulk-act on more, the request is rejected and you'll need to break it into smaller groups. In practice this matters only for "select all" actions on giant folders.
• Storage pool checks still apply. Restoring 50 GB from Trash will fail if your pool doesn't have 50 GB of headroom right now (because restored items return to the active pool count). The error tells you exactly how much over you'd be.

If you hit any of these limits, the operation rejects cleanly — no partial application. Either the whole bulk action succeeds or none of it does.

Bulk vs script

Sometimes "bulk" through the UI isn't enough — you have a CSV with 80,000 file IDs you want to delete, for example. The Drive UI doesn't expose that workflow directly, but the underlying API does. Talk to support before you build anything programmatic; we can usually offer guidance on rate limits and the right batch sizes for very large operations.

Using bulk for organisation

A few patterns where bulk genuinely saves time:

End-of-quarter cleanup. Open the Trash view, sort by deletion date, select everything older than 60 days, Delete forever. Frees up a chunk of pool without touching anything you might still want.

Folder restructuring. You decide your old "Files" folder should split into "Files/2025" and "Files/2026". Sort by modification date, select the 2025 items, bulk-move into a new "2025" subfolder. Same for 2026.

Deleting an old project. Open the project's folder, header-checkbox, "select all," Move to Trash. The whole project disappears in one click. If you need to recover later, the items are in Trash for 30 days.

Preparing handover. New owner is taking over a shared folder; you want to clean out drafts before handover. Filter by your changes, bulk-move drafts to a "Drafts" subfolder so the new owner sees only finished work at the top level.

Behaviour at edge cases

Items selected from multiple folders: Bulk move and bulk delete work across folder boundaries. Select files from three different folders, bulk-move them all to a fourth — works fine.

Selecting both files and folders: Bulk actions apply to whatever's selected, regardless of type. Select-all in a folder grabs both files and subfolders, and the action applies to both.

Selecting items in Trash and active state: You can't — Trash and active views are separate, and selection doesn't carry across them. To act on items in different states, do two separate bulk actions.

Browser closes mid-operation: If you closed the tab during a bulk action that takes a while (huge moves can take seconds), the operation completes server-side anyway. Refresh the page after to see the new state.

Conflict during bulk move: If a destination folder already has a file with the same name as one you're moving, the moved file gets a (2) suffix. This applies per-name, so most batches are unaffected.

What's next

• Trash and File Restoration — recovery is the other half of bulk delete.
• Creating and Organizing Folders — destination folders before you bulk-move.
• Pooled Storage Quotas Explained — pool checks that block restores.