The nightmare of deleting an empty folder (auto saving)

[Ivan3z]

I am continually organizing my project files. I do a lot of tests and I usually have folders and files only temporarily.

Everything is fine until I want to delete or move them.

But even if I don’t delete or move anything, this error appears every day.

So I have an empty folder that it tried to delete. And thousands of windows appear.

Ok let’s fix the redirectors

and save all

Let’s try to erase again:

Ok, force delete then… (Sometimes force delete doesn’t work either)… but this time it worked.

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And more or less the same story happens when you want to delete a file.

Some unknown maps to save?

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Once, tired of seeing the autosave error, I disabled it in project settings.

But that was even worse… the whole project broke and I had to go back to a backup.

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I don’t remember this happening in UE4…
Can this be fixed?

I’m on EU5.03…
The project was migrated from UE 4.27 if I remember correctly… And I have this problem for several months.

At first I thought it was normal, but now I think it’s not normal…

I’ve been reading some posts similar to this one.

Can't delete "empty" folders because files are still in them?

After deleting/moving files out of folder until they are empty and fixing up redirectors, often times there are “empty” folders that can’t be deleted because even though they show no files in them in the editor, if you check them in the file explorer outside of the editor, you will find they have files in them that should have been moved/deleted already. What is going on with this? How do I fix it? Am I supposed to manually move those files outside the editor in a file explorer, that are still l…

This comment especially caught my attention.

Is it not safe to move or delete any blueprint related files?

@Pine722 I’ve never had anything like that. Typically just using the content browser works fine for me. I think the only other thing to watch ( apart from force delete ) is don’t move assets around when you have more than one copy of the project open…

But if you never use force delete, you will never be able to delete the folder. Even if you restart the engine the folder cannot be deleted.

The only way to delete in this case is using windows explorer.

In either case, the damage has already been done.
Is there any way to fix it?

Thank you very much!!

[S-Dot]

Yes - This is a bit weird with the ‘autosave needs to be resaved but can’t’ problem after fixing redirect. I always fix redirect for the entire content folder. Then save all and ignore the ‘untitled’ needs to be saved message and restart the editor. After restart you should be able to delete the folders. You can also delete the folders in explorer if there are no redirectors left in it.

Also multiple renaming can cause problems. Always good to fix redirects and then restart when you have to rename something that was already renamed before.

[Ivan3z]

Ok, thank you very much, I’ll try to do it like this the next time I have to delete something… so far I was only fixing the redirectors that are inside the folder that I wanted to delete… I’ll try doing it with the entire directory tree of the contents folder as you recommend.

Very thankful!!

[Ivan3z]

I can’t fix all the redirectors in the whole tree…

I have the error: “Failed to Load Asset”

I resave all the whole tree too…

This did not solve the problem.

What happens if I manually delete all the autosave files?
Can I do that?.. or will I break everything?

[S-Dot]

I would say it’s safe to ignore these warnings. I also think it’s safe to delete your auto save folder. It will just create a new folder. But if you want to be save just rename the folder.

I’m a bit confused by the directory in the warning /temp ? It should be /saved in my opinion

[Ivan3z]

I deleted all temp files in the following folders and the autoresave error disappeared (at least today i have been many hours without seeing it).

…\Saved\Autosaves\Game
…\Saved
…\Saved\Logs
…\Saved\Crashes

However moving files still have problems.
I moved a file out of a folder and then try to put it back in the same folder.

fix redirectors didn’t work…
This is crazy!!

[S-Dot]

If you move an asset out of a folder it will create a redirect with the same name as the asset you moved out. So you cannot move it back because there is already a file with that name in it.

You could try to make a brand new project. Then migrate all your content into this project and abandon the other one. Do a fix redirect before you migrate.

I had that weird problem of autosave files need to be resaved when deleting, or moving assets, or fixing redirect. But other than that everything seems to be the same as with UE4. So maybe there is something wrong with your folder permissions. Also as someone mentioned already: Make sure you’re project isn’t open twice or an old Unreal service is still running on your machine that keeps you from saving.

[Ivan3z]

Ok, I’ll migrate the project. It’s not a problem with the folder permissions, I just checked, there are no read-only files. And I also don’t have older versions of Unreal running. So I sure broke something by force deleting some file or folder.

I’ll let you know how it turned out. I hope, to be able to migrate and that everything remains just as ordered. Once I tried to migrate and the files were in completely random folders. And that made me abandon migration. I have all my files perfectly organized and it would be a daunting job to have to organize them again.

Thank you so much for your help. I am very grateful!!

[S-Dot]

Just want to make sure you know that every file and directory needs to be within the Content folder.

[Ivan3z]

yes, everything is inside the content folder.

Inside this I have another folder “Game” that I use to avoid mixing the things that I download from the store and that I don’t normally i do not use in my project. Like For example Megascans or Parangangon. I don’t use it at the moment.
And I think it won’t be necessary, I’ll probably delete it.

And inside the Game Folder I have my blueprints, my materials and everything else…

Inside them there are more subfolders.

Everything is well separated. I don’t like to mix things of different uses.

Do you know if there is any limit on the number of subfolders the tree can have?

I know that:
-Do not use names or PATHs that are too long for files and folders. (I guess 256 characters is the maximum)
-Do not use special characters (Only ASCII characters)

I don’t know if there is a limit on the number of subfolders.

Thank you so much for everything!!

[S-Dot]

That looks fine to me. I have a similar system. The names are not too long. The max name length is the entire path as far as I know. This includes the project directory name. So it goes like C:/User/Documents/Epic/Projects/MyProject/Content/Game/…
(Unless Epic has changed that recently). So make sure no weird characters anywhere in that path name.

Other than that maybe try to avoid too many renames. I do quite a few myself but I always fix them up (redirectors) when I’m done with it.

[Ivan3z]

I will.
I’m waiting for the developers to fix the bugs in version 5.1 to migrate my project. (the actors were invisible in the scene and I couldn’t work)…

Invisible actors in Unreal 5.1

Hey again @Ivan3z! It isn’t known for sure if this is a glitch in the update process. Something you can do in the meantime: Highlight the entire actor list, and you should be able to hit the checkbox for Hidden in Game and it will enable/disable hidden for all at once.

I hope they do it soon. I’m dying to try the new version.
I’ll tell you about how the migration went.

I really appreciate your patience for me!!
Thank you so much for your help!!

[Ivan3z]

I migrated my project to a new C++ project. I’ve been two days without having any problem with Autosaving.

And I have been able to delete and move folders and files without any problem… this is wonderful!!

Thank you very much for your help!!
Much appreciated!!