Enable the Windows 8 delete file confirmation dialog

Updated: Same instructions for Windows 10

You may find that in Windows 8 / Windows 10, when you delete a file, you don't get prompted to confirm whether you want to delete it or not.  If you press SHIFT+DELETE then you will get prompted. However, if you want to re-enable the delete file confirmation dialog, you can do so by right-clicking on your RECYCLE BIN and then clicking PROPERTIES.  From there, you can check the DISPLAY DELETE CONFIRMATION DIALOG checkbox and hit APPLY.

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2013
  thank you

• Anonymous
  February 12, 2013
  Thank you so much

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2013
  Thanks for this valuable information.  I've been looking for this switch in the many places and in the Control Panel items and found none.  So glad you posted this info here.  Thank you!!

• Anonymous
  March 05, 2013
  thank you so much to sharing such a informative help for me.

• Anonymous
  April 07, 2013
  Excellent thanks for the quick fix!

• Anonymous
  June 21, 2013
  Thank you so much

• Anonymous
  July 16, 2013
  Thanks for the tip. But why MS changed the default behavior?

• Anonymous
  July 17, 2013
  Don't know why they changed it :/

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2013
  thanks a lot

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2013
  Thank you so much

• Anonymous
  November 04, 2013
  Thanks a lot !

• Anonymous
  November 08, 2013
  thank Q useful info.

• Anonymous
  December 09, 2013
  Bom dia

• Anonymous
  January 04, 2014
  Thanks for this info :)

• Anonymous
  February 18, 2014
  Thanks

• Anonymous
  February 24, 2014
  10x a lot

• Anonymous
  February 26, 2014
  Much appreciated, thank you!

• Anonymous
  March 15, 2014
  thanks bro!

• Anonymous
  March 20, 2014
  Thanks, Mohammed. Seems like a pretty strange default setting for such a new feature, after all these years.

• Anonymous
  March 23, 2014
  thank you very much.

• Anonymous
  May 22, 2014
  really it is too much helpful.....thnx... :)

• Anonymous
  June 18, 2014
  Very useful and clearly explained.

• Anonymous
  June 19, 2014
  Very helful

• Anonymous
  August 21, 2014
  thanks a lot

• Anonymous
  September 14, 2014
  Thank you and so simple. why is this not thedefault for W8?

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2015
  Like others I looked all over my Win8 laptop & queried help with every keyword I could think of to try to reverse this insane decision on the part of Win8 designers. Is no one at Windows aware deletions from removable storage just go away forever, so that an accidental deletion (and what is easier on a touch screen device?) can be absolute disaster? Not too swift, guys. They couldn't have put the "enable confirm" in a more unlikely place if they'd thought it out with both hands! Thank you so much for posting this.

• Anonymous
  August 11, 2015
  Thank you very much.  Saved my time.  Stay blessed!!

• Anonymous
  September 01, 2015
  thank you! this is going to cause problems! lots of files are going to accidentally be lost.

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2015
  Windows 10, your method works fine. Thank you!!!

• Anonymous
  October 12, 2015
  The Recycle Bin is probably the right "place" where to manage this feature, but I wasn't so clever to find it... Thank you.  

• Anonymous
  October 12, 2015
  Been searching the internet.  Best response!!! Awesome, well done.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2015
  Thank you! Was irritating me on W10!

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2015
  Thank you!!!

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2015
  Thank you for this little but very helpful information.

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2015
  Thanks for this info! I think the change does make sense though, considering the recycle bin is there for exactly that reason, to prevent accidental deletions. I'm a creature of habit though, and am too used to it from 20 years of using Windows =) A second confirmation is not really necessary, especially because you learn in HCI that a confirmation immediately after giving the command is not usually going to help anyway, because people just confirm that they really wanted to issue that command... I think it still confirms by default if files are not just moved to a recycle bin, though, such as for some external storage, depending on its configuration. So I can't confirm AntRhonda's concern, it seems to work fine. However, I do agree that the positioning of the setting is a bit weird. There are already so many settings dialogues related to Explorer, who would've thought that the Recycle Bin would get its own exclusive ones now, too.

• Anonymous
  December 09, 2015
  Thank you Mohammed Adenwala. ;-) Fast and effective. Blessings

• Anonymous
  December 10, 2015
  This is very helpful. Thank you so much.

• Anonymous
  January 16, 2016
  Extremely useful - thank you very much. (Why MS disabled the default prompt after so many years is beyond me. 'If it ain't broke ... break it!')

• Anonymous
  February 22, 2016
  thanks so much

• Anonymous
  February 22, 2016
  Thank you so much..This is very helpful..

• Anonymous
  February 25, 2016
  Thanks a lot u r a life saver

• Anonymous
  April 19, 2016
  thank you!

• Anonymous
  June 21, 2016
  Yes, it's a problem!

• Anonymous
  July 06, 2016
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 30, 2016
  thankzzzzzzzzzzz

• Anonymous
  September 22, 2016
  thanks