After far too long, we’re shipping a comprehensive set of tools for folder manipulation in Box. If you’ve been cobbling together workarounds or manually clicking through the UI, this update is for you.
What you can actually do now
The basics (that should have always been there)
Create, rename, move, copy, and delete folders programmatically. Yes, really. You can now build folder structures on the fly, reorganize content at scale, and tear down what you don’t need anymore. The delete operation even supports recursive deletion when you need to nuke an entire tree. Be careful!
Information and discovery
Pull detailed info about any folder or list its contents. The list operation goes beyond surface-level too : turn on recursive traversal and you’ll get everything nested underneath, however deep it goes. Perfect for auditing, backup workflows, or finding that one file buried three levels down.
Organization
Add descriptions to folders so people actually know what they’re looking at. Tag folders for categorization and search. Query those tags when you need them. It’s basic organizational hygiene that’s now scriptable.
User experience touches
Mark folders as favorites (or remove them from favorites). It’s a small thing, but when you’re building tools for actual humans, these details matter.
Collaboration and access controls
Configure who can invite collaborators to a folder and whether non-owners can see the full collaborator list. Lock down collaboration to your enterprise only if needed. Set upload email addresses so external folks can contribute without full access. Control sync behavior for folders.
Combining tools: real scenarios
Project template setup: Create a new project folder, set its description, configure collaboration settings to enterprise-only, then copy your standard subfolder structure into it. Add relevant tags for discoverability and mark it as a favorite for the team lead.
Content migration: List all items in a source folder recursively, create the destination structure, copy folders over with new names, verify the migration by comparing recursive listings, then clean up by removing old folders.
Bulk organization: Query folders by listing contents across multiple parent directories, add consistent tags based on content type or date, update descriptions programmatically, and reorganize by moving folders into a new taxonomy.
Access management audit: Retrieve folder info to check collaboration settings, list all tags to verify classification, query favorites to understand what teams are actively using, then bulk-update collaboration policies where needed.
Automated cleanup: Recursively list folder contents, identify stale directories based on your criteria, remove from favorites if present, strip out tags, then delete with recursive flag enabled.
The step-by-step demo
Let’s start by simple creating a folder:
Of course I had to get that wrong and needed to rename the folder.
Now let’s add a description and some tags:
I also want to see this folder in my favorites:
This is what the folder looks like now:
Box app displaying the folder tags
Now let’s create a bit of a structure:
Claude created two folders
And I messed it up again. Let’s move the contracts folder into the legal folder:
Claude moved the Contracts folder
Now a need the exact same structure to store older documents, like an archive:
Claude copied and renamed an entire folder structure
Let’s check what we can see now:
Claude listing the demo folder recursively
Now let’s clean up. Although Box does have a trash, where files and folder can be recovered, deleting folders can be disruptive to your organization:
Claude deleted the folder recursively
Box app can’t find the folder anymore
That’s it. No revolutionary breakthrough here, just solid tools that let you manage folders without fighting the platform. They work the way you’d expect them to work. Ship your automations, build your workflows, and stop clicking through web UIs.
Available now in the Box Community MCP server.
