Windows 10: Empty folder message for non-empty folder by Windows 10

"This folder is empty" message displayed by Microsoft OneDrive although the folder has thousands of subfolder with over 20 000 files!

This error has been since Windows 10 OneDrive was introduced.

:)

 

Unable to Empty Folder

In the built in Mail app, in Windows 10, when I right click on the Spam folder, and click 'Empty Folder', I get a message saying, "Unable to Empty Folder" with a Dismiss button, and no explanation.

 

Empty Folders

With rare exceptions, any empty folder is safe to delete. But if you want to be sure, please post a reply to this message with the names of the empty folders and the full path to them.

But also note that is almost no advantage to deleting an empty folder. An empty folder uses a *tiny* amount of disk space.

 

That is not an error, that only tells that have not setup OneDrive on your PC, therefore nothing is synced yet. This tutorial shows you how to select content to be synced to your OneDrive folder: OneDrive Selective Sync - Choose Folders in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

The OneDrive folder will then only show the synced content. To manage content not synced to local machine you need to use a browser, or install the OneDrive app from Windows Store:

 

Any folder having subfolders - not files directly under it - we define as non empty.

In this case Its sub-folders have tens on thousands on files!

If one moves down the directory structure the MS software does detect that there are files and folders
and does not anymore display the message which we regard to be erroneous.

This Microsoft error has nothing to do with synchronizing in our case.

 

It has everything to do with your selected sync settings.

OneDrive folder on your local PC only shows the content you have selected to be synced. It does not show files you have selected not to sync. OneDrive has no issues to sync and show files in all subfolders.

An example.

Here some files in my OneDrive folder 6 subfolder levels down:




Removing the last level from sync...




...the folder and its content disappeared immediately from the OneDrive folder:




Selecting the folder again, OneDrive starts immediately synchronize its content, the small blue sync symbol telling the folder has not been fully synced yet:




Important to notice is that if as you say there are tens of thousands of files to be synced, it can take days, even a week or two (depending on your Internet speed) before they are all synced and appear in OneDrive folder. In a recent test I did I clean installed Windows 10 then set it to sync all content from another OneDrive I have, first checking online that it had over 400 GB stored and to be synced:



I let the PC on without doing anything else with the machine, wanting to see how long it would take to sync that 417 GB. With no overhead and if the machine would have been able to use my full 100 Mbps download speed it should have taken just over 9 and a half hours. However, because I have other devices sharing the same connection, it took almost 4 days before everything was synced, meaning an average of 10 Mbps download speed.

This had been even slower if I had used the PC during those days; OneDrive sync client is intelligent only using the bandwidth it can use without preventing other normal use of the computer.

If some of your files are not synced to your PC, you have not selected full content to be synced.