Google Docs – Delete Multiple Documents at Once

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This has been asked and answered before, but the answers are for the old interface (predating Google Drive), so I'm asking again.

I have about a hundred docs in my Google Docs view, most of which are junk — they were apparently shared by some other user, and I really don't want them. The only way I can see to remove them is one at a time, which takes maybe 10-15s each. That's an experience I'm not interested in having.

I really only want to keep a handful of the documents, and I'd even be able to live with it if they had to go, too, but I'm finding Docs to be pretty useless with all the noise.

Edit:

Please stop trying to "solve" this problem for me on Google Drive. It's not a problem with Google Drive, and the files in question don't show up there at all. The problem is with Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/). There's no "inbox", there's no opportunity to "select" multiple files. The only controls are a little "hamburger" menu that lets me view "Docs", "Sheets", or "Slides", open a Settings page, get Help, or visit Drive, and some icons to switch between tiled and list views, change the sort order, or open the file picker, and an icon to create a new file.

Best Answer

Short anwser

Google Docs (http://docs.google.com) doesn't have a way to delete several files at once. Instead of using it for that use Google Drive web UI, Google Drive for PC/Mac or another tool that use the Google Drive API or Google Apps Script.

Explanation

Operations in the new Google Docs "file management" web app are very limited. It could be used to:

  • Sort files
  • Filter files by owned by the user by owned not by the user or not filtered
  • Open Google Docs files through the file pickers
  • Delete single files
  • Rename single files

but could not be used to select multiple files and do actions over the selected files at once.

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