How to Fix Source Path Too Long to Delete Error in Windows 10

Oftentimes when you have something stored in very deep directories of your computer, and you wish to delete it, you get an error that reads “Source path too long to delete”.  Well, it becomes important to fix source path too long to delete error when you wish to delete something from a folder, or delete a folder itself.

In this article, we are going to show you how to fix source path too long to delete error in Windows 10 in a very simple manner.

Fix Source Path Too Long to Delete Error

By Changing The Location of The Folder

This one requires some time but it is one of the simplest way to fix source path too long to delete error.

Step 1: Go to the folder that you want to delete, select it, right-click on it and click on select ‘Cut’.

Step 2: Now bring it to a location that actually has a shorter path by pasting the selected folder to a new and shorter path.

Now try deleting the folder or file and that should work out for you.

Using Command Prompt

Step 1: Go to the Windows search bar, type “cmd”, right-click to Run as administrator.

Step 2: Now we have to go to the disk in which the folder that we want to delete is present. By default the Command prompt is in your C: drive and to switch to another drive, you just have to type the drive letter and hit enter.

For example, the folder that I want to delete is in G: drive so I will have to type

G:

and hit enter.

Now I am in the G: directory.

Step 3: To see the list of all the folders and files in the drive just type

dir

and hit enter

Step 4: Now you can just go to the folder that you want to delete by typing

cd “folder_name”

You will have to repeat steps 3 and 4 until you reach the final location of the folder that they want to delete.

I just did the same thing to show you, I created a folder inside folder chain and named them 1, 2, 3, 4 and in folder ‘4’ I created a folder named “folder” and a text file named “file”. And below I have shown how to delete both the file and the folder using cmd.

First of all, make sure that you have come to the right path coz the folder deleted using the cmd command can’t be retrieved.

As you can see in the image below, I am on G:\1\2\3\4 and as soon as I entered the command dir, it showed me the folder named ‘folder’ and a text file named ‘file.txt’.

Step 5: Now to delete the folder, type

rmdir folder_name

, which in my case was ‘folder’ so I typed

rmdir folder

and hit enter.

That’s it and your folder is deleted.

You can’t delete a file using rmdir command, it is only for deleting folders, if you want to delete a file then you have to type the following command

del file_name.format

, which in my case was

del file.txt

So those were the two ways by which you can fix source path too long to delete error in Windows 10. If you face any problem reach us out.

Are you facing any other problems and issues with Windows 10? Then there is nothing to worry about, we have an article dedicated to Windows 10’s issues and guides, visit Windows 10 Troubleshooting Guide, moreover, you can search the error in your site’s search bar, you will get the desired solution. I hope you would like this content if you have some more suggestions let us know in the comment section.