General help

If you have ran a scan and no duplicates are found, don't worry. You either genuinely don't have any duplicates, or you need to tweak the criteria a little.
Common settings which can cause no duplicates to be found are:

  • Subfolders not being scanned.
    Are you scanning the subfolders of the input folders you have listed in the 'Folders to search' list? Be sure the 'Scan subfolders' column is set to 'Yes' (Or the 'Scan subfolders' checkbox is ticked if using version 3).
  • System folder being ignored.
    Are you trying to scan a folder/subfolder which has a Windows 'System' attribute? Uncheck the 'Protect important system folders' settings in the Options drop-down menu. Always be careful not to delete system files unless you are sure you don't need them.
  • File filter restrictions.
    Check your file filters on the 'Search criteria tab'. Generally you want to scan everything (*.*) and exclude nothing.
  • File size/date restrictions.
     Check you don't have any file size or date restrictions in the Criteria tab. Try 'Any size' and 'Any date' if not sure.
  • Restrictive criteria.
    Make sure your search criteria isn't too restrictive. If searching by content, you don't generally need 'Same file name' or 'Same created / modified date'. If you have 'Same created date' checkmarked this won't generally find copied duplicates as they usually have different created dates.
  • Other folder settings.
     In the 'Folders to search' list make sure that 'Scan against self' is set to 'Yes' if you want to find duplicates within that folder. If 'Master' is set to 'Yes' then bear in mind that only files that duplicate any folder with the 'Master' flag will be shown.
  • Duplicate pictures not found.
     Be sure you are running in 'Image mode' to find similar, resized or rotated images. Otherwise only exact duplicates (same image, tags, size, etc) will be found.

Office Documents or PDF files not matched

Sometimes documents such as Microsoft Word files, while seeming identical, may not match in 'Same Content' mode.  This is because the files may have been loaded/saved at different times and so have tiny date changes embedded in the file.  This prevents an exact match.  One way round this problem is use a 'Similar Content' scan with a very high setting (98 or 99%).  Always be careful to double check the files before removing!


OneDrive / Cloud files.

You may need to alter a setting in Duplicate Cleaner or download files locally - check the following FAQ for details:

Scanning DropBox / Google Drive / OneDrive in the cloud


Image Mode

This mode finds similar images. Supported image types are:

.bmp .gif .jpg/.jpeg .ico .png .emf .dib .tif/.tiff


If you want to find RAW camera image formats such as .cr2, .dng or .raw you need to checkmark 'Raw image support' in 'Advanced search options' on the Criteria tab.

Any other file types are ignored in this mode.


Audio Mode

Supported file types are:

.mp3 .ogg .wav .wma .ape .flac .m4a .m4p


  • Similar Audio is the most flexible mode and should compare across formats and files of differing quality.
  • Audio mode (Match audio tags) relies on your files having been tagged with song title and artist information as a minimum. These tags (ID3) are usually created by the audio download or CD-ripping program (e.g. iTunes).
  • The exact audio data compare mode will ignore the tags but will only match exact data (same compression type, bit-rate, sample rate, etc).


Hashing not Working
There is one possible reason for this behaviour - Windows has an setting called "FIPS Mode" which disables most cryptography (including the file hashing used by Duplicate Cleaner).  It is often used on government machines but may have been enabled somehow. Disabling this, if it is your own machine and not a company policy, might be worth a shot.