Download and delete documents safely

Download one document or a whole folder, and know exactly what a delete removes before you confirm it.

Document Management: download and delete documents safely

Before you start

Downloading needs the Documents permission with View. Deleting needs Delete, which most people shouldn't have. Follow your organization's records policy before removing anything.

Download one document

Right-click the document and choose Download to save its file to your computer. A download is a copy: it doesn't change or remove the document in Droplet, and it is recorded in the document's Activity tab.

Download a folder

  1. Right-click the folder and choose Download All. This includes every subfolder.
  2. Watch the progress. You can cancel part way through.
  3. Open the ZIP file. Its folders match the folders in Droplet.

Large downloads are split into several ZIP files of up to 250 MB each, named like Invoices (part 1).zip and Invoices (part 2).zip. Open every part. If some documents couldn't be included, Droplet lists them when the download finishes.

Before you delete

A document filed by more than one sorting path appears in more than one folder, but it is one document. Deleting it removes it from every folder it appears in. You can't remove it from just one of them.
  • Open the document and confirm it is the one you mean.
  • Check whether your records policy requires you to keep it, and download a copy first if you need one.
  • If the document came from a form submission, the submission is a separate record on the form. Check both if you need to remove the information completely.

Delete one document

  1. Right-click the document and choose move to trash.
  2. If you change your mind, click Undo in the message that appears. Undo is only available for a few moments.

To see documents that have been deleted, open the kebab menu at the top right of Docs and choose Trash Can. Opening it requires the view documents permission, and it shows a count of deleted documents and the same toolbar as the folder tree. Open a deleted document and use Restore or Delete Forever in its preview toolbar; restoring a document is recorded in the document's activity history. To clear everything at once, use Empty Trash.

New Deleted documents live in Trash Can, which opens from the kebab menu instead of the account menu. Restore and Delete Forever sit in the deleted document's preview toolbar.

New Delete Forever works for individual deleted documents, and an Empty Trash button clears the whole trash at once. Anyone with the view documents permission can open the Trash Can, and the document and folder menus say move to trash.

Delete everything in a folder

  1. Right-click the folder and choose Delete all docs. This includes every subfolder.
  2. Droplet counts the documents and asks you to confirm. Read the count before you continue: documents in this folder that are also filed in other folders are deleted there too.
  3. Watch the progress. If you cancel part way, documents already deleted stay deleted.

If the result isn't what you expected, stop and contact support@droplet.io with the folder name and the time you ran the delete.

Retention

Documents left in the Trash Can are deleted permanently and automatically 30 days after they are moved to the trash, and the Trash Can shows a message saying so. Droplet doesn't delete documents on a schedule anywhere else, so removing records when your retention period ends is a manual task. Keep your retention schedule in your records process.

Last reviewed by Lindsay Miceli and published on November 5, 2026 11AM ET