Windows cmd delete folder

Do you want to delete a directory from Windows command prompt(CMD)? This post explains how to use the command rmdir to delete folders and their contents. You can also find examples for each use case of folder deletion – empty folders, non empty folders, folders with white spaced names etc.

Delete folder from CMD

Run the command rmdir on the folder.

How to delete a non empty folder

The simple rmdir does not work for folders having some content.

Use /s option to delete the folder contents along with the folder. This deletes all subfolders recursively.

Force delete a folder without confirmation

ToВ force delete directory, without being asked for confirmation, we can use /Q switch.

We can also use ‘rd’ in place of ‘rmdir‘. Both names refer to the same command. This command works on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7 and 10.

Deleting directory with white spaces in the name

Rmdir can delete files with whitespaces in the name, you just need to wrap up the folder name in double quotes as shown in the below example.

Delete contents of a directory but keep the directory

The usecase here is to delete all the contents of the directory but keep the parent directory so that we do not need to create it again. rmdir /Q /S does not work here as it deletes the parent directory too. Rather the below commands should do the trick.

This works in 2 steps – the first command deletes all files, whereas the second one deletes all subdirectories.

Errors

To delete a directory, you should have appropriate access permissions on the directory. Otherwise rmdir throws ‘Access denied’ error.

Thanks dude..I was looking for command line way of deleting nonempty folders.. cheers.

Good old DOS….something tells me one day the world will be saved by a DOS operation. ; )

cannot delete… access is denied. am trying to delete a directory on a flash drive. cannot access permissions because explorer isn’t working. using win7

Note:
Don’t forget to leave a “space” in the command line..
rmdir /Q /S_“folder with spaces in the name” I meant “space”, ait’t “underscore”. And upper case of “S”. Good luck!

Hi
can you show me an example of command to delete this path in bat file.
C:Program FilesMicrosoft Office Communicator

am not able to do this . some error s

Is this in Windows 7/Vista?.
If so then you need to take ownership of the files. You can do that with below command from elevated administrator command prompt.
takeown /F "c:Program FilesMicrosoft Office Communicator" /R /A

then run the below command to delete this folder.

rmdir /S "c:Program FilesMicrosoft Office Communicator"

cd program filesmicrosoft office communicator
then enter press
rd /s “filename”
Then enter

I am getting the following error “The process cannot access the file because it is being us
ed by another process.” what should be the case now?

You should not have the Dir you want to delete open… Close it and then try the command again

Could you kindly post the command for deleting my folder which is at Drive G. Name of the folder is Recycler. Thanks

Thank you so much. I was trying to delete an entire directory of files, about 200k folders and files, and it kept throwing a warning “this folder is shared with other people”. No such warning with this command!

i followed your instructions but i’m getting error to delete a folder in cmd. ERROR = The system cannot find the the specified…

You should make “C:” your default Directory, tot do this type “cd.. && cd..” The type the command again but leave the “C:” and just type the rest of the code.
It should look like this: C:>rmdir /Q /S UsersOwnerSongsNew

i have installed new win 8 n a back up of old win 8 is in c drive with a name windows old n its not being deleted by ANY means . i have tried this one as well but it says on all files access is denied

I tried the process many times but it says “access is denied”….
My entire path is “C:program filesalwil softwareavast5” . How should i delete this avast5 folder with all the folders inside it.

run cmd.exe as administrator
make sure avast service is not running

Every time I try it says the file cant be found

you’re really awesome. Googled a 1000 times just for this line

“C:>rmdir /S nonemptydir
nonemptydir, Are you sure (Y/N)? y”

Thank you so much for your help. This changed my life.

Thank you so much for your help. This changed my life.
please attache more basic command for beginner person for my email
tnx

I need to do that, help me out

D:abc has files and folders in it

but by using rd or rmdir

rmdir d:abc /s /q will delete abc folder also but i don’t want this.

the asterisk stands for ‘anything’ in or below the named directory.

I want to delete subfolders of a folder older than 10 days.I am able to delete files but not folder

I wanted to know the bat file programm for deleting the contents (sub folders) of a folder on certain conditions. can anyone help.?

How to delete folders created programatically with timestamp attached at the end.

Like we do for files :
DEL comp*

Is there any command for folders:
RM com*
or
RMDIR com*

I’m wanting to delete the directory c:windows.old I followed the instructions above I run CMD as admin, I typed in: takeown /F c:windows.old /R /A And hit enter key. It did this part properly but Then I typed in: rmdir /Q /S c:windows.old And after every entry it said Access denied. what is the command line/s i need to type to atlas delete the directory c:windows.old ? (using windows 10)

I got the same problem…….
please someone help.

thank you .
i m so glad

I followed the instructions above I run CMD as admin, I typed in: takeown /F c:windows.old /R /A And hit enter key. It did this part properly but Then I typed in: rmdir /Q /S c:windows.old And after every entry it said Access denied. what is the command line/s i need to type to atlas delete the directory c:windows.old ? (using windows 10.
Please somebody help………………………

takeown /f D:OrganizationalUnitEveryone /r /d y
icacls D:OrganizationalUnitEveryone /grant administrators:F /T
attrib -s -h -r D:OrganizationalUnitEVERYONE /s /d
forfiles /P D:OrganizationalUnitEveryone -S -M *.* /D -2 /C “cmd /c del /f /q @PATH”
forfiles /P D:OrganizationalUnitEveryone /M * /D -2 /C “cmd /c if @isdir==TRUE rmdir /S /Q @file”

Thank you very much! With these commands I could remove all “c:Windows.old” files and directories.

Hello,
I have four folders and I want to keep two of them along with their contents and delete other two folders. How can I do that?
My Parent folder -> Folder 1 (file1.txt), Folder 2 (file2.txt), Folder 3 (file3.txt), Folder 4 (file4.txt).
Need to delete or remove 2 folders and keep 2 folder with their content.
Need command for this.
Any help will be appreciated.

Super Cool!! Deleted a stubborn non empty directory in no time. Thanks for this guide.

I have several folder: folder1, folder2, folder3
how to delete all “folder” with *

Note: This commands doest’n work:
RM folder*
or
RMDIR folder*

I want to thank you very much for the help on deleting these files. I ended up using the CMD method, but it worked perfectly. Again, thank you.

Thanks. After struggling for months and hunting the web, I was finally able to delete a folder using your advice “Deleting directory with white spaces in the name”

OMG! Thank you! Was trying to delete the remaining empty folders of an old eset nod, but couldn’t. This did the trick (hoping). I’m just wondering if its still in the background somewhere. T.hanks again

in programatically if any changes in the inner files or directory after delete the parent directory doesnot work
eg:
system(“rmdir /s/q ””d:/test/hari””);——>it works
but after
system(“rmdir /s/q ””d:/test””);—–>it doesn’t work

How do I delete files or folders recursively on Windows from the command line?

I have found this solution where path we drive on the command line and run this command.

I have given an example with a .svn file extension folder:

11 Answers 11

Please execute the following steps:

1. Open the command prompt
2. Change directory to the required path

Give the following command

The other answers didn’t work for me, but this did:

/q disables Yes/No prompting

/s means delete the file(s) from all subdirectories.

You can use this in the bat script:

Now, just change c:folder a to your folder’s location. Quotation is only needed when your folder name contains spaces.

ex. RMDIR "C: mp" /S

Note that you’ll be prompted if you’re really going to delete the "C: mp" folder. Combining it with /Q switch will remove the folder silently (ex. RMDIR "C: mp" /S /Q )

For file deletion, I wrote following simple batch file which deleted all .pdf’s recursively:

Even for the local directory we can use it as:

The same can be applied for directory deletion where we just need to change del with rmdir.

If you want to delete a specific extension recursively, use this:

You could also do:

The /p will prompt you for each found file, if you’re nervous about deleting something you shouldn’t.

That is, rmdir /S /Q C:Temp

I’m also using the ones below for some years now, flawlessly.

Check out other options with: forfiles /?

Delete SQM/Telemetry in windows folder recursively

Delete windows TMP files recursively

Delete user TEMP files and folders recursively

I want to delete all files and folders in a folder by system call.

I may call like that:

Do you know an easier way?

9 Answers 9

No, I don’t know one.

If you want to retain the original directory for some reason (ACLs, &c.), and instead really want to empty it, then you can do the following:

This first removes all files from the directory, and then recursively removes all nested directories, but overall keeping the top-level directory as it is (except for its contents).

Note that within a batch file you need to double the % within the for loop:

del c:destination*.* /s /q worked for me. I hope that works for you as well.

I think the easiest way to do it is:

The last "" in the path is the important part.

Yes! Use Powershell:

If the subfolder names may contain spaces you need to surround them in escaped quotes. The following example shows this for commands used in a batch file.

To delete folder with all files in it:

To delete all files from specific folder (not deleting folder itself) is a little bit complicated. del /s *.* cannot delete folders, but removes files from all subfolder. So two commands are needed:

You can create a script to delete whatever you want (folder or file) like this mydel.bat :

Few example of usage:

One easy one-line option is to create an empty directory somewhere on your file system, and then use ROBOCOPY (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145.aspx) with the /MIR switch to remove all files and subfolders. By default, robocopy does not copy security, so the ACLs in your root folder should remain intact.

Also probably want to set a value for the retry switch, /r , because the default number of retries is 1 million.

I had an index folder with 33 folders that needed all the files and subfolders removed in them. I opened a command line in the index folder and then used these commands:

I separated them into two lines (hit enter after first line, and when asked for more add second line) because if entered on a single line this may not work. This command will erase each directory and then create a new one which is empty, thus removing all files and subflolders in the original directory.