Don't Want to See a Folder - Hide Folder

Hi Grace, 

Welcome to the Box Community!

We don't currently offer the feature you asked about archiving/hiding old folders in your Box account. What I can suggest is that you create a "main folder" where you can move all your old folders that you do not wish to delete from your Box. 

For any product feature request or suggestions, we recommend you post your idea on pulse.box.com for more visibility. Our product team reviews all submissions and will consider whether to include feedback in their product roadmap. 

Should any new functionality/ feature come out, we will definitely announce it in Box Product Announcements!

Thanks for your participation in the Community!

Hi France,

I am also very interested in this functionality. However, the suggest you have pointed out is also not possible if you have shared folders that you are not the owner of. I am part of shared folders, and I am unable to move them into a different folder on my local Box. 

Is there a solution for this? It is very overwhelming in my Box folder and makes it difficult to use Box on a regular basis for my files.

I have the same issue. Having too many shared folders on my Box Drive makes it hard to focus on my own folders. I would like to hide them in my local Box folder (only want to see them when I log in online). I cannot move them to an archive folder as I am not the owner. I don't want to totally remove the folders either because I may need to check on some files at certain time. Hiding them from view, or making them only show up online, will work best for me. Thanks!

Hi All, 

Thanks for following up on this!

We’re recommending that users use the ‘Collections’ feature to group together content that’s frequently used vs. hiding content that’s infrequently used.

For more information on how user and to manage content in your Collection, see Using Collections.

Hope that helps! Thanks again for your support and time in the Community!

Hello France,

This does not seem to be an option within my university account. Is this feature hidden elsewhere on different types of accounts?

Thank you,

Alyssa

Same issue here. My university account does not show the Collections feature either.

Hi All, 

The " All-new Box Web Experience and Collections" would need to be enabled for you by your Box administrator if you are not seeing this feature in your account.

This can be enabled under the Enterprise settings > Custom Setup.

Kindly reach out to your admin for further assistance.

Thanks, but I don't think I'll have much leverage as a single student in a body of 40,000.  

Looking forward to when other options become available. Until then, looks like DropBox is easier to use in conjunction with Box as I have been doing...

Re: shared folders which you've been added as a collaborator. The Collections feature doesn't provide the ability to move them from the All Files page of the Web UI or from the Box Drive root. We were hoping it would provide this ability as the All Files page can become cluttered by these folders. Instead it allows you to group them on the left side pane under a Collections drop-down and also add a context label, but as I understand it there is not a way to move them from the root to another folder. 

Hello France,

Is there an update or a work around for this? 

I have older versions of How To's with different hardware. I do not wish to delete them or hide them, users aware of them should be able to find them, but I do not want them brought up in the search. 

Can we make folders unsearchable?

I could invite only the users who should be able to edit them, but those might also be the ones I want to keep from pulling it up in searches.

Thanks!

Box really needs to add support for more sophisticated viewing options of the Folder Tree.  There should be a simple option that allows one to 'hide' any files/folders that are merely Shared.

Agreed. Its ridiculous that I have to see folders that are years old. I'm not asking to move or delete them, but simply to hide them.

Do better, Box. Its almost 2022. 

I want to amplify what many of my colleagues have said. I have hundreds of Box files and folders, most of which I cannot do anything because I do not own them. All I want is the capability to create a folder in Box called "Old Stuff," where I can put all of these old files and folders, so I don't have to look at them or scroll through them to get what I need. This is especially irritating when I use Box with another application and send a file from that application (e.g., Notability) to Box. I have to scroll through the whole folder list to get to the right place. It's a damnable nuisance.  Box is great for the security it provides, and my university requires that I use it to store student and research files, So, I have to use it all the time. Any help you can give to give us some relief on this would be genuinely appreciated. 

I'm in a similar situation.  I'm in a large Faculty with little folder discipline and my Box drive scrolls over probably 3 or 4 screens worth of folders where I am not the owner.  It would be very helpful if there is a way to hide them.  Thanks

It is puzzling to me that Box does not offer this obvious feature, viz., a way to hide certain folders (e.g., those that are older, those that have been uploaded into my folder by the departmental office personnel, etc., etc.). When I am working from home on my classes or on my research work, I certainly do not want to see a cluttered up box folder, do I? Box is perhaps not what I should be using especially given the length of time it has taken to address this issue. 

I'd like to amplify this concern too. For example, if your organization adds you to a bunch of shared folders that start with numbers (e.g., dates), your personal and team folders and files will be buried below the fold in both the web and Box Drive views. Also, Collections don't solve this since they are not the root level directory in Box Drive.

Ideally, I'd be able to go into the web view and mark selected folders as hidden from my own view (both owned and added as shared). This would allow me to see the current shared folders but hide the obsolete ones.

This is a huge user experience issue that isn't even that hard to implement. Why do we have to have all shared folders in the root of our box drive? Why can't we move shared folders into other folders of our own? Google Drive supports all these and more. Unfortunately due to my institution requirements I must use Box, and it really is a drag.

If you came here with a similar issue, please vote on this ticket so Box hopefully implements this faster:

https://pulse.box.com/forums/909778-help-shape-the-future-of-box/suggestions/39953575-organize-and-move-shared-folders-within-non-shared

I'd suggest upvoting this request as well:

https://pulse.box.com/forums/909778-help-shape-the-future-of-box/suggestions/36106606-ability-to-hide-folders-i-ve-been-added-to

For some unclear reason, Box seems to think that 'Collections' are the solution to this problem.

Yes ....... I cannot express how great this "feature" would be.  A very simple toggle in the Web view of Box Directory / Folders ... Show / Hide and based on that setting it controls what I see in both the web side as well as Finder (for Mac).  This would be phenomenal productivity upgrade.  Pretty please with sugar on top.

It's 2022. People have been complaining about this since 2019! 

All we want is to put the share folders into another folder instead of showing all of them in the root folder!!

Can you imagine whenever you open box online and box app, when you want to find your own folders, but there are hundreds of shared folders that block your sight?

We just don't want to see shared folders in the root folder!! Please hear us!!! BOX!

The best way I found around this issue is to drag your folders you want to see into your 'Favorite' folder in collections. I mostly use the online version of BOX and every time I log on I just work out of my favorite folder. Hope this helps!

None of these suggestions address the problem when accessing the root folder in Box Drive. This is especially painful when your organization shares large numbers of directories.

Echo everyone as I dont see the best solution mentioned. I've been using Box Sync before which works better where I can just unsync folders I dont want to see in explorer and I missed that feature. Now I have to see the many folders when I open the explorer. Any idea when similar feature to box sync will be reintroduce?

So I've been having the same problem as described above for Box Drive, and found this thread while searching for an official way to solve the issue. This solution uses Windows Explorer's normal functionality for hiding folders.

I think I have found a way to hide the folders in the Box Drive/Windows Explorer UI which has not been mentioned on here.

1. In Box Drive, right-click on the folder you wish to hide (either from the Explorer navigation tree, or from the main Box Drive folder), then go to Properties.
2. At the bottom of the Properties window (under Attributes), mark the Hidden attribute checkbox, then [Apply]. A pop-up may ask if you want to apply this to subfolders and files - I've been checking the option to do this.
3. The now-hidden folder will show up in the Box Drive directory until you close the Explorer window and open a new one. Once you do this, the folder will no longer show up in Box Drive. (It will show up on the Box website)

I just tried this and the instructions provided by Matthew Donovan worked for me.  This is a decent work around until something is added to Box Drive to help make this easier.