No Warning message for Deleting Folders that are not empty?

[Ron_Bowman]

I was just helping a colleague with deleting folders in his course.  I decided to see if there was a warning message if a folder that had content was selected to be deleted.  The only message is the dialog box asking to confirm the deletion of the folder. 

I always check my folders first.  However, because they were looking for help on deleting folders, I decided to check for the unfortunate event of deleting files or folders inadvertently by deleting the folder that contained those files and sub folders.

Does anyone know if there is such a warning?  I am used to UNIX/Linux that will not delete a directory if it is not empty(unless you force the deletion).

If there is no such warning, I will put in a feature request for that warning to be put in.

[nmbucklein · Accepted solution]

Hi @Ron_Bowman 

I checked our Idea Conversations page and was unable to find any feature requests made as of yet for this to be added. As of right now, it is not a feature of Canvas. Hope that helps!

[Ron_Bowman]

@nmbucklein 

Thanks.  That is what I thought.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi there, @Ron_Bowman ...

I'm not sure what your school's budget looks like, but have you checked out TidyUP from Cidi Labs?  We have TidyUP, and it is great for file and course content clean-up.  And, it doesn't let you delete folders within a course "Files" area that also has files in that folder.  Check out this screenshot from my own sandbox course:

If a folder can be deleted, there is a red trashcan icon (not pictured) available to delete the folder.  But, if the folder cannot be deleted, the trashcan icon is not available for that folder.

Here's some additional information for you on their website: TidyUP for Canvas File and Page Cleanup - Cidi Labs.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Ron_Bowman]

@Chris_Hofer 

Thanks for the information.  I imagine that my university would not want to pay for something like tidy-up.  Although i will say that it looks like it has useful features that would be used by anybody working with a lot of information in their courses.

I may pass it along and see what comes of it.

Edit: I checked out the site and watched parts of their demo video.  That is definitely a useful product for cleaning up any course in Canvas.  I am not sure what the cost would be for us - they mentioned about $1000 for FTE of 0-1500, We would be in the range of 10,000-15,000 so my guess is $5000-$7000 which my university may or may not go for.  I sent it to one of the people in our Canvas department to see what comes of it.