iCloud Drive can't delete folder

It seems to be a timing-out problem. If I delete small batches of files at a time, I don't get this error. If I delete a large folder, I do. Given that this is being done on the server side, it seems like a very strange problem, and I hope Apple will fix it soon. In the meantime, like eating an elephant, it does seem to be possible to delete folders if you do it a small bite at a time.

I have the same problem and, yes, deleting them a few at a time works. But what a pain - I have 28 GB to delete!

Apparently, it is still not fixed! I have >10,000 files to delete, and batches seem to be less than 10.

What a pain!

I managed to delete my 12.5gb folder by programming a little java application that deletes files recursively from iCloud Drive -folder. The application deletes a file, then waits few seconds before deleting the next file. That makes the crappy iCloud Drive sync NOT to restore the deleted file!

I finally figured it out. If you have an iOS device running iOS 8.3 (should work on previous versions of iOS 8), go to Settings -> iCloud -> Storage -> Manage Storage -> Other Documents, then click "Edit" at the top, right corner and delete the ones you want, or press "Delete All." Hope this helps!

Yes, this is how it's supposed to work. But this thread is about the situation when the folders just cannot be deleted due to error in iCloud Drive.

I have over 130GB of files to delete with thousands of folders, so it would takes weeks of work to delete. I tried synching locally on my desktop iCloud Drive without any success, and also tried using the browser, nothing works.

I have an open case with Apple support and still waiting for an answer to this problem.

Yo Apple, fix your f*cking sh*t already. This common problem has persisted for over a year now and I have been unable to backup my iPhone because of it. I'm not about to delete hundreds of folders and subfolders one at a time manually, which seems to be the only work around. This is unbelievable.

Hi folks I called Apple on this same issue today and we found a work around that worked for me.

I opened up a new finder window and selected the iCloud Drive folder (I found it under my "Favorites" along with Airdrop, Applications, etc.)

From here I just deleted the folders/files that I wanted.

Then made sure to delete them from the Trash as well.

This did the trick. When opening up iCloud Drive from my phone or from the icloud.com website the changes were reflected- deleted files were gone.

Hope this helps you all.

Take care, Adam

I also had to delete 30GB of files, because of click&buy blocked my account so i couldn't receive no emails no more.

The following worked for me:

- go to iCloud drive in safari

- don't delete folders but files (like there are many pictures in one folder, select all and delete)

- wait 10 sec and upload a small file in the folder

- reload page and delete the small file

I guess when uploading a small file it deletes the old files in the folder.

Hope it helped

Same problem here, 120Gb to delete. called Apple support, took a few days of phone calls back and forth before they informed me the only way to delete the data is what I'm doing, a few files at a time. Been at it two weeks and only deleted 23GB so far. Not fun- seems silly they don't have a work around.