How to delete duplicate photos and folders in Picasa

Duplicate Photos and Folders almost inevitably result when Importing and Managing photo collections. Some duplicates will always exist because most people have multiple folders targeted at different uses, and adding a duplicate is easier than making an album.

Picasa provides an experimental tool called Show Duplicate Files to make it easier to detect and delete duplicate photos in the Picasa collection. In this topic we use this tool in addition to some other Picasa tools to control duplicate photos and folders.

Before starting duplicate removal, first make sure Picasa is "Watching" all the folders (menu: Tools > Folder Manager) you have that contain photos, and that it is not watching folders that purposely contain duplicates.

Examples or these folders are Backup Sets, Archives containing copies of camera cards, and temporary copies of photos or folders.

See the following FAQ and especially Step 2 about the Folder Manager: How to find missing photos

If you have just a few duplicates to clean up, try the first topic below: Simplified Duplicate Photo Removal.

Eliminating a large number of duplicate pictures is a complicated and time consuming process. For best results you should follow the steps in the second topic: Eliminate Duplicate Folders and Photos.

Both methods presented here use the Picasa Experimental "Show Duplicate Files" tool:

In Picasa, the Tools menu > Experimental > Show Duplicate Files menu choice starts the Show Duplicate Files tool.

The tool hides all photos except those that have duplicates. It shows all the folders that have photos that are duplicates. In each folder all of the photos in that folder that are duplicates are shown. It also shows you any albums that references any of these duplicate photos. Photos actually exist only in folders. Albums do not have their own copies of the photos. Albums simply "refer to" or "point to" photos, which always live in folders.

Click here for more info on Folders vs. Albums. The fact that a photo appears in an album does not make that photo a duplicate. To be a duplicate, the photo has to exist more than once in the folders. It's important to know about the albums, though, because if copies of the same photo exists in two separate folders (and thus, are duplicates), and an album is referencing one of those duplicate photos, you want to be sure to delete the correct copy of the duplicate photo from the correct folder. That is, you probably want to delete the photo that is NOT being referenced by the album. That way, after the delete, the album still has a photo to reference.

Simplified Duplicate Photo Removal

This simplified duplicate photo removal process makes it relatively simple to remove duplicates when there are just a few duplicates and they are not in folders Synced to the Web (Sync to Web no longer works).

It is always advisable to have a current backup of your photos before deleting any photos in Picasa because you could be deleting your only copy of an important photo if you make a mistake.

Configure Picasa Settings

• 1. Go to View menu -> Folder View, and set the folder view to Tree View. Also set Folder View to Sort by Name.

  2. Set the Column to the right of the thumbnails to the Properties screen by clicking on the blue circle with a "I" inside in the lower right.

     1. The Properties Column gives you information about the selected photo so you can better choose which ones to keep and which to delete

  3. Go to the Tools menu -> Options -> General tab. In the General tab under Files: make sure the box Delete from Disk Without Confirmation is Checked so you won't have to confirm every delete.

  4. Start the Show Duplicate Files tool: Go to the Tools menu -> Experimental -> Show Duplicate Files.

• • 1. All Folders will be shown that contain Duplicate photos.

• 5. In the lower right below the thumbnails is the thumbnail size slider. Drag it left or right to adjust the thumbnail size for best viewing of the duplicates

Compare and Delete Duplicate Photos Side-by-side

• 1. Go to the Albums collection and click on the search results green Album..

     1. The duplicate photos will now be listed side by side.

  2. If you wish you can drag the separator bar between the folders column and the thumbnails to the right until only 2 photos are shown per row.

  3. The duplicates should be side by side, but may get out of order if there are an odd number of duplicates.

  4. Even if out of order, one duplicate will be to the right and one will be left when only 2 columns of photos are shown.

  5. You can click on each duplicate photo and the Properties panel on the right will list the name, size, location etc. of that photo.

  6. Decide which duplicate photos should be deleted and select them

  7. When you are satisfied that the selected duplicates can be deleted, Right-Click on a selected photo and Delete from Disk (or push the Delete key on the keyboard). .

  8. The Photos selected will be deleted, and the other half of the duplicate set will be removed from the duplicate list.

  9. The total number of duplicates is listed in the green bar at the top of the thumbnails.

• • 1. This total number should go down by approximately twice the number of photos deleted since the other half of the duplicate set will also be removed from the list as it is no longer duplicated. The number will not be exactly twice the number of deletes if there are more than 2 copies of the same photo.

• 10. Repeat the above steps 3 thru 7. Don't delete so many duplicates at a time that you lose track.

  11. In the Green bar at the top of the thumbnails, click the green button Back to View All to see all photos and folders again.

Eliminate Duplicate Folders and Photos

Special care should be taken when you have a large number of duplicates or a lot of folders, albums, etc. It is suggested that you do all of the tasks in order for best safety and results.

Tasks:

• • Make sure you have full backup of all your photos:

    • When you are deleting duplicates it is always possible that you could delete one you wanted to keep.

    • A backup allows you to recover from mistakes.

  • Ensure that no backups are being watched.

    • Picasa should not be set to watch backups, because they should be kept safe and not edited.

  • Ensure that no unwanted folders are being watched.

    • There could be a number of folders you don't want to see in Picasa, and they should not be checked for duplicates.

  • Eliminate phantom duplicate folders:

    • It is possible for the Picasa database to be messed up in such a way that the same physical folder in Windows could be listed twice in the Picasa folders collection. By eliminating them we ensure that the same photo isn't listed twice (and thus show as a duplicate).

  • Mark duplicates that are in Albums:

    • Albums don't have photos in them, they point at photos which are in physically inside folders. If two photos are duplicates of each other, and one is in an album, preference should be given to keeping the duplicate that is in the album. We mark the album photos with a gold star so the user will know it is in an album and should be kept if possible.

  • Eliminate duplicate folders:

    • If two folders are duplicates of each other, one of the two should be eliminated. If they have both existed for a while, they may contain other photos that were added later or edited and saved. This task deletes the duplicate photos, then suggests moving the remaining non-duplicates to the other folder so the empty folder can be eliminated.

  • Delete duplicate photo files:

    • After all the duplicate folders and other large collections of duplicates are eliminated, the remaining duplicate Photos will have to be sifted through one-by-one, or in small groups to decide which ones can be eliminated. Hopefully there will be relatively few duplicate photos at this point.

    • Remember that there may be some deliberate duplicates that should remain.

  • Clean up:

    • During clean up we take care of any Album photos that should be moved to another location.

    • Stars are removed from the Album Photos.

    • Folder View is changed back to it's preferred settings.

Do a Full backup of your Picasa Photos

Note: If you have a current backup you can skip this topic.

Before you begin any task in Picasa that could result in photos being deleted, it's always good to do a full backup. If you mess up and delete the wrong thing, you can restore it from the backup. You can use the built-in Picasa Back Up Pictures tool or an external backup or copy / sync tool.

Picasa's built-in Backup tool is ideal for this backup because it includes a restore function that restores only deleted files and folders. It also saves the pictures in uncompressed format so you can selectively restore even a single picture.

Back up pictures using the Picasa backup tool:

• 1. Go to the Tools menu and select "Back Up Pictures".

  2. In the Backup tool box 1 select New Set So you will create a new complete backup, not an Incremental backup.

Check for and Eliminate Phantom Duplicate Folders

If you are sure you don't have Phantom duplicate folders, you can skip this topic, but keep the possibility in mind as you delete folders or photos.

Sometimes the Picasa Database can be messed up and show "Phantom Folders"

Phantom Folders are where the same folder is shown more than once in the Picasa Folders collection. Phantom Folders will normally be shown next to each other in the left-hand column in Picasa under "Folders"

Configure Picasa Settings

• 1. Go to View menu > Folder View, and set the folder view to Tree View. Also set Folder View to Sort by Date, or Sort by Name, whichever is easier for you to look through.

  2. Set the folder window width to wide enough to see complete folder names by dragging the separator bar between the folders and the thumbnails to the right to make it wider.

  3. Set the column to the right of the thumbnails to the Properties screen by clicking on the blue circle with a "I" inside in the lower right.

Find Phantom Duplicate Folders

• 1. Look through the folder names in the Folders collection on the left

  2. When you find 2 or more names that are exactly the same, check to see if their paths are exactly the same. If they are, both entries are the same folder which means one is a Phantom.

     1. Check Paths one of these 2 ways:

• • • • Locate on disk method:

      • Right-click on one of the folders and select Locate on Disk.

      • Next, right-click on the second folder and select Locate on Disk.

      • For each folder, a Windows Explorer (WE) window will open.

      • Compare the Paths in the two WE address bars, and if they are both the same Windows folder, one is a phantom folder entry in Picasa.

    • Folder Tool-Tip Method:

      • Click on one of the folder names in the Folders collection.

      • That folder will be selected and its name will be at the top of the thumbnails in the center column.

      • In the center column, hover the mouse pointer over the manila folder icon to the left of the folder name.

      • The complete folder path will appear in a yellow tool-tip box near the mouse pointer.

      • Repeat the above with the second folder.

      • If the paths in the tool-tips are identical, one of the folders is a Phantom.

Remove Phantom Duplicate Folders

• 1. Click on the folder name of one of the two identical folders above.

  2. Go to the Tools menu > Folder Manager, and the folder name should be highlighted in the folder tree on the left in the Folder Manager.

  3. Click on the Remove from Picasa (Red X) button on the right, then select OK to exit the Folder Manager.

  4. Both folder names will probably be removed from the Folder Collection.

  5. If both names are gone, go back into the Folder Manager and set the folder (which now should have a red X to "Scan Always" (blue circular arrow)

  6. Picasa should re-scan the folder, and only the single folder name should appear.

Note:

• • If both folder names were not removed in step 3 above, click on the second folder name and go to the Folder Manager again.

  • If the second name does not point at the (Red X) folder you removed in 3 above, it is not a Phantom Duplicate, and is a real duplicate of the first folder in a different Path. Treat it as a real second copy of the folder. Make sure you remember to set the first folder back to Scan Always.

Ensure that no backups or other unwanted folders are being watched by Picasa

Backups of folders will contain copies of photos, but they are duplicates you want to keep so you can restore your photos if necessary. You could also have folders that are not being watched by Picasa, and of course, Picasa cannot detect duplicates unless the folder is being watched.

• • 1. Go to the Tools menu> Folder Manager, and notice the drive and Folder Tree on the left, and the Watched Folders list in the lower right.

    2. In the Watched Folders list, make sure no drives or folders containing backups are being watched.

       1. If you find something being watched that you don't want to be watched by Picasa, click on the Watched Folder and press the "Remove from Picasa" button.

    3. In the drive and folder tree on the left, drill down through the folders and subfolders and make sure all folders you want to see (watch) in Picasa are set to "Scan Always", and that all drives and folders you don't want to see (watch) in Picasa are set to "Remove From Picasa." It is usually a bad idea to watch a whole drive, because there may be incidental photos or graphics used for other purposes that you wouldn't want to clutter up your photo collection.

    4. In the drive and folder tree on the left, drill down through the folders and subfolders and make sure no drives or folders are set to "Scan Once"(green check-mark). Normally nothing will be set to Scan Once. If you find something, set it to "Scan Always" or "Remove From Picasa" depending on if you want to see it displayed in Picasa or not.

Mark Duplicates that are Referenced in Albums

Note: If you don't use Picasa "blue" Albums or don't care if some duplicated photos may be removed from the Albums you can skip this topic.

Albums do not contain pictures themselves, they just contain pointers to photos that exist in folders. The fact that a photo appears in an album does not make that photo a duplicate. To be a duplicate, the photo has to exist more than once in the folders. It's important to know about the albums, though, because if copies of the same photos exist in two separate folders (and thus, are duplicates) and an album is referencing one of those duplicate photos, you want to be sure to delete the correct copy of the duplicate photo from the correct folder. That is, you probably want to delete the photo that is NOT being referenced by the album. That way, after the delete, the album still has a photo to reference.

Configure Picasa Settings

• 1. Start the Show Duplicate Files tool:

     1. Go to the Tools menu > Experimental > Show Duplicate Files.

     2. All "Blue" Albums that reference photos that are duplicates will be shown in the Albums collection.

Mark Duplicate Photos that are referenced in Albums

Note: This Procedure uses the Star Icon to mark the duplicate photos referenced in Albums so you can avoid deleting those Photos. If you use the Star Icon for other purposes, just be aware that the duplicates in Albums will also be marked with a Star.

• 1. In the Albums Collection, click on the first album..

  2. Go to the Edit menu -> Select All (or type Ctrl+A on the keyboard) to select all the duplicate photos in that Album.

  3. Just above the Green Share button is a white Star outline. Click it to make it Gold. This will set all the duplicate photos to Starred and put a small gold star in the lower right corner.

  4. Repeat the above steps in each Album so all Duplicates that are in Albums will be starred.

After this procedure, all duplicate photos that are in Albums will be marked with a Star.

In the Eliminate Duplicate Folders, and Delete Duplicate Photos procedures below you should give preference to any photos with a gold star as they may be referenced in Albums, and deleting them will remove them from the Album.

Eliminate Duplicate Folders

A common cause of Duplicate Pictures is Duplicate Folders. Often when people are collecting or arranging photos, the same set of photos will be placed in more than one folder. In this topic we discuss how to eliminate duplicate folders without losing unique photos that may be in one but not the other.

Configure Picasa Settings

• 1. Go to View menu> Folder View, and set the folder view to Tree View. Also set Folder View to Sort by Name.

     1. Tree View is required when Deleting Folders because when you delete a folder, all subfolders are also deleted, and in Flat File View there is no indication that a folder contains subfolders.

  2. Set the folder window width to wide enough to see complete folder names by dragging the separator bar between the folders and the thumbnails to the right to make it wider.

  3. Go to the Tools menu > Options > General tab. In the General tab under Files: make sure the box Delete from Disk Without Confirmation is Checked so you won't have to confirm every delete.

  4. Set the Column to the right of the thumbnails to the Properties screen by clicking on the blue circle with a "I" inside in the lower right.

  5. Start the Show Duplicate Files tool:

• • 1. Go to the Tools menu > Experimental > Show Duplicate Files.

    2. All Folders will be shown that contain Duplicate photos.

Find Duplicate Folders and Combine or Delete Them

• 1. Look through the Folder names in the Folders collection on the left To the right of the name is the number of duplicates in that folder.

  2. When you find 2 folders that contain the same number of photos it is likely that they are duplicates of each other.

  3. To see if they are duplicates of each other, right-click on each of the folders and select Sort Folder By... > Name.

  4. Compare the 2 folder's duplicated contents and decide which folder you want to keep.

  5. In the folder you want to delete, Select the last photo and do File menu Save a Copy.

     1. This makes sure there is at least one photo in the folder so we can find the folder in Picasa later.

  6. Select all the duplicates in the folder that is to be eliminated, then press the Delete key to delete them.

• • 1. Note: If you have Starred photos that are in Albums, don't delete the Starred photos.

• 7. In the Green bar at the top of the thumbnails, click the green button Back to View All to see all remaining files in the folder to be eliminated.

  8. In the Folders, find and click on the folder to be eliminated.

  9. Decide if the folder should really be eliminated, or if, now that the duplicates are gone, it should remain with the remainder of it's included files as a unique folder. If it should remain, delete the copy of the photo you saved above as it is no longer needed.

  10. Move all the photos in that folder, EXCEPT for the copy you saved above, to the Folder you are keeping.

• • 1. Note: Starred Photos will be renamed with a -001 after the file name, but will stay in the Albums.

• 11. When the folder to be eliminated is empty except for the copied photo, right-click on the folder and select Delete from Disk. The folder to be eliminated is now deleted.

  12. Start the Show Duplicate Files tools again and repeat steps 1 thru 11 for each duplicate Folder pair.

Delete Duplicate Photo Files

Once the duplicate folders are taken care of, there should be fewer duplicates. The remaining duplicates will usually be mixed up in random folders. Since some of these duplicates are intended, it is best to handle them on an individual basis so you can decide which duplicate you want to keep or if you want to keep both. In this topic we go through 3 passes through the photos to selectively remove duplicates

• • In the first pass we look through the folders collection. Since only folders containing duplicates are shown, we can look in each folder and see if there is something that obviously shouldn't be there. If you are not sure, wait for the 2nd pass when the duplicates can be compared side by side.

  • In the second pass, look at the duplicates side by side and eliminate any unneeded duplicates.

  • For the third pass, repeat the first and second passes again until you only have duplicates you have decided to keep.

Configure Picasa Settings

• 1. Go to View menu > Folder View, and set the folder view to Tree View. Also set Folder View to Sort by Name.

     1. Tree View is desirable during this process because it makes it clear where the photos and their containing folders are on your computer.

        1. In Flat File View there is no indication where a folder is in the folders on your computer..

  2. Set the folder window width to wide enough to see complete folder names by dragging the separator bar between the folders and the thumbnails to the right to make it wider.

  3. Set the Column to the right of the thumbnails to the Properties screen by clicking on the blue circle with a "I" inside in the lower right.

• • 1. The Properties Column gives you information about the selected photo so you can better choose which ones to keep and which to delete

• 4. Go to the Tools menu > Options > General tab. In the General tab under Files: make sure the box Delete from Disk Without Confirmation is Checked so you won't have to confirm every delete.

  5. In the lower right below the thumbnails is the thumbnail size slider. Drag it left or right to adjust the thumbnail size for best viewing of the duplicates

  6. Start the Show Duplicate Files tool: Go to the Tools menu > Experimental > Show Duplicate Files.

• • 1. All Folders will be shown that contain Duplicate photos.

Delete Duplicate Photos in Folders

• 1. Click on the first Folder in the Folders collection to show the duplicates in that folder in the Thumbnails.

     1. The photos you see are one of a pair of duplicates. the location of the other duplicate will not be known at this time.

  2. Look through the photos and find any that should not be in that folder.

  3. You can click on any photo and the Properties panel on the right will list the name, size, location etc. of that photo.

  4. Any photos that have a Gold Star in the lower right may be referenced in an album and should not be deleted yet.

  5. Select all the photos that you want to delete from this folder and Right-Click -> Delete from Disk (or push the Delete key on the keyboard). .

  6. The Photos selected will be deleted, and the other half of the duplicate set will be removed from the duplicate list.

  7. The total number of duplicates is listed in the green bar at the top of the thumbnails.

• • 1. This total number should go down by approximately twice the number of photos deleted since the other half of the duplicate set will also be removed from the list as it is no longer duplicated. The number will not be exactly twice the number of deletes if there are more than 2 copies of the same photo.

• 8. In any cases where you are not sure about a photo, don't delete it at this stage, wait for the side by side comparison to be done later.

  9. Repeat the above steps for each folder in the Folders collection.

• • 1. Folders may disappear from the collection when they no longer contain any duplicates.

Compare and Delete Duplicate Photos Side-by-side

• 1. With Show Duplicates tool still active, Go to the Albums collection and click on the search results green Album..

     1. The duplicate photos will now be listed side by side.

  2. If you wish you can drag the separator bar between the folders column and the thumbnails to the right until only 2 photos are shown.

  3. The duplicates should be side by side, but may get out of order if there are an odd number of duplicates.

• • 1. Even if out of order, one duplicate will be to the right and one will be left when only 2 columns of photos are shown.

• 4. You can click on any photo and the Properties panel on the right will list the name, size, location etc. of that photo.

  5. Drag a selection box down the right column of duplicates to select around 50 of them.

  6. Any photos that have a Gold Star in the lower right may be referenced in an album, so scroll down the selected column and Ctrl-Click any photos with a star to deselect them from the selection.

  7. When you are satisfied that the selected duplicates can be deleted, Right-Click on a selected photo and Delete from Disk (or push the Delete key on the keyboard). .

  8. The Photos selected will be deleted, and the other half of the duplicate set will be removed from the duplicate list.

  9. The total number of duplicates is listed in the green bar at the top of the thumbnails.

• • 1. This total number should go down by approximately twice the number of photos deleted since the other half of the duplicate set will also be removed from the list as it is no longer duplicated. The number will not be exactly twice the number of deletes if there are more than 2 copies of the same photo.

• 10. Repeat the above steps for each folder in the Folders collection. Don't delete so many duplicates at a time that you lose track.

Clean Up

• 1. When all you have left are a few starred photos and their paired duplicate that were not deleted because they were in the wrong folder, select the unstarred photo of the pair, push the F2 key, and rename it by adding Dup- to the start of the file name.

  2. Go to the Folders collection and drag the starred photo from it's present Folder to the folder with the duplicate if you would rather have it there, or wherever you wish, then delete the file with Dup- prefix.

  3. If you marked albums with stars you should go back and un-star the album photos.

     1. In the Albums Collection, click on the first album.

     2. Go to the Edit menu > Select All (or type Ctrl+A on the keyboard) to select all the duplicate photos in that Album.

     3. Just above the Green Share button is a Gold Star outline. Click it to make it White. This will clear the star on all the duplicate photos.

     4. Repeat for the rest of the Albums

  4. In the Green bar at the top of the thumbnails, click the green button Back to View All to see all photos and folder again.

  5. Set your Folder view back to your Preferred view.

Yes. Eliminating duplicates is a tedious job. And it's sometimes hard to find the related duplicates, especially if there are a lot of duplicates in a big report. But if you just start deleting random duplicate photos, you'll likely mess up your album definitions. And you may end up with related photos splattered around in several folders.

As you can see, it's definitely easier to get organized early and avoid getting duplicates in the first place than it is to go back and clean up a "duplicates mess" later.