Delete Nextcloud intro.mp4, Nextcloud Manual.pdf, etc. for old users

ℹ️ Support
1

Hi,
I have inherited a Nextcloud installation that is currently in use. The previous admin didn’t delete the Nextcloud files that are added by default from the skeleton. I have deleted them for new users, but I would like to know if there is a way of deleting them for old users too. If they were files shared by a user (i.e., admin user), they could be managed from this user’s profile, but for what I see they are a special type of files. Thanks!

2

There is nothing special about these files. They are simply copied, from the skeleton directory to the user directory, the first time a new user logs in: Providing default files — Nextcloud latest Administration Manual latest documentation

A user can delete, move and change these files and folders like any other file or folder. Also, when you add new files to the skeleton directory, or remove / change existing ones, they will not be added, removed or updated in the directories of existing users.

3

Sorry I think my question was not clear. Is there a way of deleting them for ALL users as an admin, as if they were created by me?
I have read some information about deleting files for all users (Reset / Delete files of all users), but it doesn’t apply to my case as I only want to delete these default files. Thanks!

4

If you have access to file system of the server you can manually delete the files and then issue occ files:scan -all in order to make Nextcloud aware of the changes.

Instead of manually deleting the files in each user folder, you could also write a BASH script that is searching for the files and then deletes them.

However, be aware that depending on the Nextcloud version that was in use when a particular user first logged in, there might be different files in place. And of course, some users may actually be using some of the templates and may have even made changes to them. So I’m not sure if it would be a good idea to just delete all skeleton files without notifying the users first.

EDIT:
Deleting the intro.mp4 and the Nextcloud Manual should be fine though. These are also the two files from the skeleton folder that take up the most disk space.