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We have a lot of folders in Box that contains a lot of duplicative folders/files and wanted to find a way to compare them so that if 

  1. They are the same, we can just delete one of them
  2. One has more files, delete the one with less files
  3. Missing files in either folders, synch them and delete one of them.

I’m not sure if Box have this capability or not.  Secondly, Box Drive doesn’t show certain type of files, we can’t really do an apple-to-apple comparison between the folders using third party software on our local Box Drive.

Any suggestion, API, etc is greatly appreciate.

Hi ​@Chai 👋 Welcome to the Box Community!
 

You may consider Folders and Files Report where you can see everything from size of folder, to number of items, and even look at the last modified dates to make that determination which folder you want to keep.


There's also likely a hash value comparison you could do to check for duplicates. Per our Get File Information developer article, we do have an API call that will allow you to get the hash values for number of files. When running the API call in the "Request Example" field, the "sha1" line in the Response Example field is the file's hash value.
 

I hope you’re able to resolve the duplicate concern with these suggestions. If you need further assistance regarding the use of API to call out the hash and then compare the hash values from file to file, it would be best to post in the Platform forum. Also, you may submit a support ticket so our Platform Support can assist.


For Box Drive, we’re still waiting for our Support’s feedback to understand its behavior. Meanwhile, you may check our support articles:

 

Have a great day! 💙

Thank you Jey for the quick response.

I was looking at the folders and files report option and it’s manageable for smaller folder comparison, but I have 151 main folders that I know have duplicates and in each of those folders, there’re thousands of files and subfolders -- some are closer to the millions.  Running the report would take a long time for each folder and then running the comparison for that many files would be almost impossible or very inefficient process.

I was hoping for some way to do a side-by-side folder/file comparison like Beyond Compare, but would take into consideration those files that Box doesn’t display through Windows Box Drive like .pst, .bak, etc.

Hello ​@Chai My pleasure! 🤗 I completely understand that managing a large number of files and folders can be challenging. While we currently don’t have an automated solution to simplify this process, we’d be happy to help explore options.
 

As a next step, I recommend submitting a support ticket to see if there are any API calls or scripts that could assist in reviewing duplicate files.
 

Additionally, we’d love for you to share this as feedback on Box Pulse or upvote similar ideas. Your input helps our Product Team continually improve our offerings and shape the future of Box.


Thank you for your time, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend ahead! 💙

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