In photo gallery, I have multiple copies (3 - 5) of the same image displayed. If I look in folders, there is only one file. How can I eliminate the dupes is photo gallery?

Question

There are 100 image files, but in photo gallery, 400 images including all the dupes are displayed.  How do I get rid of them easily, and how can I prevent this in the future?

Answer 1

Hello,

Welcome to Microsoft Community forum. Let's see what we can do about your duplicate photos in Photo Gallery. It is possible that there are really two copies of the photos on your computer. Photo Gallery doesn't actually store the photos, but views them based on what folders are included.

To verify this right-click a blank part on the Photo Gallery (where the photos are shown), then select Group by, then click Folder. This will sort the photos based on the folders where they are located. Then, check if there are duplicated photos located on other folders.

From there, you can opt to delete the duplicated photos located on the other folder. You can also try to remove the folder from Photo Gallery by following these steps:

1. Click File (Or press Alt+F), then click Include folder.
2. Select the folder, then click Remove.

If in case the folder is not shown, the folder is under a selected folder (like My Pictures). You may need to move the folder to a different location or delete it to prevent it from showing as a duplicate in Photo Gallery.

Let us know how things turn out!

Thank you!

Answer 2

It was a good idea to put them into folders, now I am seeing "templates" from drive C and from Lightroom and other programs totaling to over 37,000 files......and I only have about 6,000 photos on here. And it's weird, on my other p/c I open photo gallery they had 16,000 templates/files and tried to delete them manually, there were so many I was just deleting "blocks" of photos and not the duplicates that are in blocks of 2. This has been going on for some time now and I am convinced there's a problem with photo gallery. It's too bad to because I like the program but have to go to Google photos now to make a portfolio.

Answer 3

Using the GROUP BY / FOLDER method, 4,409 items were deleted after 1/2 hour of picking-out what I could tell were duplicates...................still do not understand how the dupes came to be..........THANKS A WHOLE BUNCH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 4

Hi BobG98056,

We are glad to know that you solved the problem with duplicate photos in Photo Gallery successfully. Regarding your concern about SkyDrive, we recommend that you create another thread on SkyDrive forum for proper assistance. Here is the link on where you can post your questions about SkyDrive.

SkyDrive forum

For your last concern, you can use the feature of Photo Gallery to send the photos as attachment where you can customize its sizes. To do this, please follow the steps below:

Important: You must have Windows Live Mail client to accomplish this task.

1. Open Photo Gallery.
2. Select the photos you want to send via e-mail
3. While you are on Photo Gallery window, please press these keys on your keyboard in sequence, ALT + H + Y + 2

• A.

4. After doing so, a small window will pop-up that has a droplist option, click on it to choose and it will allow you to choose from different sizes. This will convert your selected photos sizes.
5. Once you are done customizing the size, click Attach button.

6. After that. an e-mail window will open where you can locate the photos you attached.

7. Input the e-mail address on where you want to send those photos then the subject of the e-mail and click Send.

If you have further questions or clarifications, please don't hesitate to post it here.

Thank you.

Answer 5

What I discovered is that when I used Photo Stream, a new folder was created holding the files I added to Photo Stream, thus creating the duplicates that appear in Photo Gallery.  Likewise for designating folders as "Shared."  I don't recall if I created these extra folders or if the system did it.  After verifying that there was only one copy of my original uploaded photos, I deleted the folders labeled Shared and Photo Stream, and the duplicates in Photo Gallery were eliminated.  I admit to being someone who "uses before reading" and this time it had consequences. 

I'm also mystified about Sky Drive.  I have a Sky Drive folder in my file stucture to which I have added files, mostly photos to share.  I have also used Skydrive.com to directly upload and share photos without using the folder in my file structure.  Why does the Sky Drive folder in my file structure exist, and is there a good explanation of how the two "Sky Drives" work together?  If there is, I haven't stumbled upon it.

Finally, when I use a real camera, vice a phone, my photo files are 4MB +/-.  Is there a method to convert them en masse to smaller sendable sized files for viewing on someone else's desktop?

Thanks for the help,

BobG98056