Hi Shannon,
Depends. If you copied and pasted the Download, it would not remove those. If you copied and select Paste shortcut, then deleting would remove the original file effectively making the shortcut useless.
Hope that helps.
Does deleting items from Downloads folder affect them saved other places?
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Anonymous
I would like to clean out my Downloads Folder on my laptop. I have saved all of the files I need from any downloads directly to organized folders elsewhere on my computer. If I delete them from my Downloads folder...will this also delete the files I have saved to other places on my computer?
Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
3 answers
Sort by: Most helpful
-
Anonymous
2022-02-24T17:53:56+00:00 Run Disk clean-up
Downloads is a temp folder, if an app once downloaded you run the file for it to be installed
-
Anonymous
2022-02-24T23:19:14+00:00 Disk cleanup is set to run automatically on a weekly basis. I am running out of space on my c drive and need to clean out unnecessary files/documents etc.