How to Remove Duplicate Documents on Windows Computer?

Published On

March 26th, 2024

Reading Time

7 Minutes Reading

If you are also struggling with a duplicated document list on your computer, don’t worry! We will discuss the reasons and solutions to remove duplicate documents on Windows computers, so keep reading the blog!

The technological revolution created many document formats like DOC, PDF, and PPT. We all use these formats to share our work with family and friends and store them on our computers for later access. The biggest problem we face with the documents stored on our computers is their duplication.

Reasons to Delete Duplicate Documents from Computer

There are many reasons for removing duplicate documents from our personal computers, and some of these reasons are:

Since we mistakenly save the same document many times, it leads to confusion about accessing the original one and a long search that distracts us from our work.
Another reason to deduplicate the documents is to ensure the safety of our computers. When we download more copies, some of them are bound to have a virus or malware inside them, hampering the security of our computers if ignored for a long time.
The more copies of a document you have on your computer, the more slowly it starts to run. You may have seen a Not Responding error or your computer suddenly crashing and restarting. You may face these incidents due to duplicated copies of your original documents.
Another reason to find and remove duplicate documents on Windows Computer is they occupy extra storage in our computers, which leads to a slow backup process.

These reasons necessitate the deduplication of documents on your computers, and we will now discuss the solutions, so keep reading!

How to Find and Remove Duplicate Documents?

There are some manual and automated solutions available to find and remove duplicate documents. We will discuss both manual and automated solutions to fix duplicate documents, so keep reading!

Manual Solutions

The manual solutions for deduplicating documents from your computers involve using the following methods to remove them permanently from your desktops.

#1 Method: File Search Feature

The first solution for deleting duplicated documents is using the File Search feature on your computers. You can see a search bar in each system folder (Downloads, Documents) you open, and this search bar is the fastest solution to find duplicate documents and delete them.

How to Fix Duplicate Documents from Windows PC?

Open File Explorer on your computer using the Window + E keys.
Go to the Documents or Downloads folder (depending upon your preferred document storage location) from the left-side panel.
Type the document format you wish to deduplicate in the search bar on the right-side top hand.
Select the duplicated copies of the original document with the name followed by digits in parentheses. For example, if you have a PDF file titled My Resume, the duplicated copies will get seen as My Resume (1), My Resume (2), and so on.
Click the Control and Shift keys to remove duplicate documents from your computers.

#2 Method: File Sort Feature

Another solution to delete duplicate documents on Windows is using the File Sort feature on your computers. Every system folder has a file-sorting feature that displays the documents on your computers based on parameters like date, type, size, and others. This feature is easy to use, and the following steps will guide you to find and remove duplicate documents:

Open the Admin folder (seen on the desktop) and go to the Documents or Downloads folder (your preferred document-saving location).
Hover the mouse cursor over Type and select the document format you wish to deduplicate by clicking the Dropdown menu.
Select the duplicated documents by using the Control key and mouse cursor together.
Click the Control + Shift key combination to deduplicate your documents on your computers.

#3 Method: Indexing Options

This method is lengthy compared to the previous two but still can fix duplicate documents on the computer. The following steps describe the entire process using this feature:

Type Indexing Options on the Windows search bar and open the app.
Click the Modify box and select Show all locations.
Check all location boxes and click OK.
Open the File Explorer (Windows + E) and your Windows user profile by selecting This PC from the left-side panel, opening the Local Disk (:C), and then clicking the Admin folder.
Click View on the top menu ribbon and choose Preview Pane in the Navigation Pane menu.
Select Details from the layout menu, click the Sort By or Group By dropdown menu, and select Ascending.
Search the duplicated documents by typing the file format in the Search bar.
Confirm the file size and creation date and permanently delete them from your computers.

These manual methods, albeit successful, get limited usage if you have hundreds of duplicate documents on your computers. Hence, an automated tool is the best solution for removing duplicated documents.

Automated Document Duplicate Remover Tool

The manual methods prove ineffective if you have hundreds of duplicate documents on your computers. Hence, we will discuss an automated tool that easily removes replica documents from your computers. This tool is the 4n6 Duplicate Remover Tool.

Document Duplicate Fixer Features

Some features of this tool are:

Preview duplicate documents before the deduplication process.
Batch removal feature for removing multiple replica documents at once.
Remove duplicate documents in formats like DOCX, XLSX, PPT, etc.

How to Delete Duplicate Documents on Windows?

Download the Document Duplicate Remover, install, and open it on your computer.
Click Proceed to start the deduplication process.
Document Duplicate Fixer has three location options for scanning the duplicated documents: My Computer, Local Drives (C, E, and F), and Select Drives and Folders (for selecting the specific folders or drives for the deduplication.
Document Duplicate Remover has a few filters for filtering out the duplicates: File name (deduplication using specific names), File Extension (for removing documents in particular file formats), Ignore File (ignore Hidden and Read-only documents), File Type (multiple choices for removing duplicates), and Size Filter (removing duplicates based on the preferred size in KB, MB, and GB).
Click the Scan Duplicates box to begin the location-scanning process.
Checking the Show Error Logs box will show you the Access Denied error message for Hidden and Read-only documents.
Document Duplicate Fixer will display the duplicated documents with their size and path (location on the computer). They are auto-selected for ease of removing them. You can preview the duplicate documents by right-clicking them and selecting Open File.
Adjust the documents selected if necessary and click Remove to start the deduplication process.

This tool works with all Windows versions, from the latest 11 to the earliest 8. Non-technical users will benefit from this tool because of its simple graphical interface.

Conclusion

Technological development has created many document formats for easily sharing our work. Many people complain about having replicas of their original documents on their computers. This blog discussed the reasons and solutions to find and remove duplicate documents. The manual solutions can efficiently deduplicate them only when their number is less than a hundred.

On the contrary, the automated tool can deduplicate documents from your computers in bulk, with specific filters helping you fix replica documents without worries.