There may be need for Windows user to quickly delete and empty all files content inside a myriad hierarchy of folders, but maintaining and preserving the structure of the folders tree. In other words, user wants to just delete and remove the files, but not the folders that storing the files. There is a trick to add “Empty Folder Contents” contextual item into right click context menu (much like how user access the “Delete” function) in Windows XP, which works on Windows Vista, also Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well.

To enable the “Empty Folder Contents” right click context menu command, just follow these steps:

  1. Run Registry Editor (regedit).
  2. Navigate to the following registry key:


  3. Right click on shell folder, and then choose New -> Key. Name the new subkey as Empty Folder Contents, or anything you would like.
  4. Right click on Empty Folder Contents and choose New -> Key. Name the sub-key as Command.
  5. Under the Command sub-key, double click on the Default value data that is located at right pane.
  6. On the pop-up “Edit String” dialog window, enter the following value:

    cmd /c "cd /d %1 && del /s /f /q *.*"

  7. Click OK button to save the setting, and exit from Registry Editor.

For user who doesn’t want to manually edit and mess with the system registry, download and apply to merge the empty-folder-contents.reg values to registry.

Now, just right click on the folder and select Empty Folder Contents to delete all its file contents recursively into all sub-directories, but the the sub-folders will not be touched and preserved.