How to Delete Orphaned Files on Google Drive – Guide

Google Drive is a great free service, but it has limited storage space. You may find that your account is filling up faster than it should. This could be due to hidden “orphaned” files. We will show you how to Remove them. Google Drive is one of the most popular cloud storage services available today. If you’ve never used a cloud-based storage service like Google Drive, take a moment to consider the benefits of keeping your files online. Since files can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection, Drive eliminates the need to email a file or save it to a USB drive. And because Drive lets you share files, collaborating with others becomes much easier.

An “orphaned” file was originally contained in a folder on someone else’s account. It’s usually a file you’ve added to a folder on someone else’s account, but the folder has been deleted, and that may leave the file “orphaned” in your account. It won’t show up in your default Google Drive file list, but it still takes up space in your account. Google doesn’t have a direct way to get rid of these files, but there is a trick (courtesy of Workspace Tips) that you can use to delete most of them.

How to Delete “orphaned” files Up Space on Google Drive

Open the Google Drive app or website. Click on the “Files” tab. Click on the “New File” button. Enter a name for your new file and click on the “Create” button.

The search engine returns a list of websites that include the word “unorganized.” ..

After doing this, a list of orphaned files will appear. Right click on each of them and select and select Remove from the context menu.

To permanently delete files from your computer, you’ll need to go to the trash folder and click Thrash. ..

Delete all the files in the current directory.

Final note

Google Drive is a great way to store and share files. However, if you have an orphaned file on Google Drive, you may want to delete it. Here’s how:

  1. Log in to Google Drive.
  2. Click the three lines in the top left corner of your screen (the one with the green arrow).
  3. Choose “Delete.”
  4. Type your name and email address into the “Email” field and click “Delete.”