Bulk File Operations Across TrekMail Drive

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).
• In webmail, Shift-click a second row to select the rows between it and your last selection. Use the checkboxes when you want to add or remove individual items.
• Open a folder before making a selection if you want to work only with its contents.

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, a Select all items in this folder link appears next to the bulk bar after you've ticked the header checkbox. Click it and the selection expands beyond the current page.

This expanded selection is limited to 5,000 submitted items. Be deliberate when you click: selecting and trashing a large folder 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 asks for confirmation before it moves the selected items to Trash.

Restore (Trash view only)

When you're in the Trash view, the bulk bar shows Restore as an option for selected items. Click it to restore the selected items. Folders bring back their contents when they were deleted together.

If a file's original location is unavailable, or an active file already uses the same name there, Drive leaves that file in Trash and reports that it could not be restored. Restore the parent folder first or rename the active file, then try again.

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 before the action commits. Treat this as final: permanently deleted items cannot be restored.

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.

Move and restore can report individual items that could not be processed, for example because of a name conflict or an invalid destination. Check the result and retry only the skipped items after resolving the problem.

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, review items you no longer need, and choose Delete forever. This releases storage without touching active files.

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. Before a new owner takes over a shared folder, bulk-move draft material to a clearly named Drafts subfolder so finished work remains easy to find.

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: Reopen Drive and refresh the folder before retrying. If the request reached the server, it may already have completed; if it did not, your items remain where they were.

Conflict during bulk move: If the destination already has a file with the same name, Drive leaves that file in its original folder and reports it as skipped. Rename one of the files or choose another destination, then retry it.

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.

Bulk operations through API and MCP

TrekMail Drive is also available through the REST API and MCP server for scoped automation. The complete local stdio catalog currently has 261 tools, including 42 Drive tools; each connection receives only the tools allowed by its scopes, plan, toolsets, transport, and safety gates. Agents can read folders, upload files, create public share links, run reviewed bulk operations, and check storage status.

Drive Add-on billing remains user-controlled: purchase, resize, and cancel actions are handled in the dashboard, not through API or MCP write tools. For API and AI-agent integration, see Drive API Overview and Drive MCP Tools Overview.