Empty Folder Saves to Mac after Zoom Call

[tashad2002]

After a zoom call, an empty time-stamped folder saves to my MacBook. Wondering how to stop this?

Thanks

[crchan123]

Hi @tashad2002! I know it has been a while since you initially posted, but I want to make sure you receive assistance. Are you still having this issue? If so, I'd love to help you get it resolved.

[tashad2002]

Hi there, I did not receive a solution yet.

[CarlaA]

Hi @tashad2002 ,  thank you for your patience! I noticed your thread and wanted to come back to it. It seems that you reached out to our support team and they were able to assist you with this issue. Did uninstalling/reinstalling the client work out for you? If you have a chance, let me know 🙂

Carla,
Zoom Community Team

Please click Accept as Solution if you found this reply helpful. Thank you!

[EmilyB]

@CarlaA   I'm having the same issue also on a Mac. After finding this thread, I uninstalled and reinstalled the client but the issue is still occurring and I had the painful process of resetting all my preferences in the new version of the client 😣 

Is there a setting for this? It only started happening for me at the end of September and it occurs for every meeting I host.

[CarlaA]

Hi @EmilyB , welcome to the Zoom Community! We are happy to have you're here and to see you contributing to the community. in the past, when I have seen this occur, an uninstall/reinstall of the Zoom application solves the issue. I'm sorry that did not work for your case.  What is the name of the folder that is being created? Can you confirm that you are using the latest updated version of Zoom?

Keep me posted!

Carla,
Zoom Community Team

[EmilyB]

Hi Carla, 

Yes, I can confirm I'm using the latest version "You are on the latest version 5.12.2 (11434)."

The folder name is always the date and time the meeting ended and the name of the meeting as assigned or my meeting room/my personal meeting room (ex: '2022-10-12 13.08.59 Emily XXXX's Zoom Meeting', if a direct call was initiated. These appear in the same location and with the same format as my meeting folders which have chat text or recordings but these are for meetings which had neither.

[luminaras]

@CarlaAI am having this same problem as Emily, and only started happening recently, maybe with latest zoom update? I have version 5.12.2 on mac Monteray with M1 chip.

You say to uninstall, then reinstall. When I look up how to do this, I do not find the 'uninstall' words/direction on my mac menu. I've already spent at least 15 min that I don't have trying to find a solution and am lost on it. Please provide exact detailed instructions on how to uninstall and reinstall or any other solution to stop zoom from saving every meeting I have in an empty folder! I have several meetings each day and this is cumbersome. Thank you!

[WvN]

I am having the same problem  -- after every meeting that I host an empty, folder appears on my computer, though I did not record the meeting.

[EmilyB]

FYI - uninstalling and reinstalling didn't work for me. I continue to have empty folders created which I am periodically deleting. No one from Zoom has followed up on my query either.

[apstein]

Hi 

I have the same problem of empty folder piling up on my computer with nothing in it. I preferred to only have chats or recordings saved on my PC, not a folder for every meeting. Can you please provide a solution to turn this off and go back to the way it was. 

[km58]

To all who've posted - I had the same problem, here's what tech support advised:

Upon further investigation the cause of this was the Meeting chat - Auto-save feature was enabled. Can you please try to disable the Meeting chat - Auto-save feature? Kindly click the link:  https://us06web.zoom.us/profile/setting, under meeting basic. You can refer to the attached screenshot for reference.
For more information, kindly click the link: Enabling meeting and webinar auto-saving chats

[luminaras]

Thanks for this. I can disable that feature, but then when I really want to save a chat, have to remember to save it. Kind of a pain in the butt, as my zoom didn't do this before. I will try it, though. If it doesn't work, I'll post back here.

[PaddyPaddy90]

I did a test (turning off the chat auto-save to computer)

It still saves a copy of the chat with your Zoom meeting audio and video recordings. You can log into zoom and download the chat later.

However, I think it the chat saved to the cloud may not include direct messages.

[EmilyB]

Thank you for the information. Unfortunately, as  @luminaras mentioned, this isn't really an advisable work-around as I can't always know prior to a meeting when a chat log will need to be stored and it's also problematic to have to switch back and forth. Hopefully Zoom corrects the problem (given that this has not always been the experience) rather than expecting their users to employ an inconvenient workaround. 

[oscarhenao]

*** The solution to this annoying problem is simple and is on Zoom's hands. Just before saving an empty chat, the Zoom client could ask the user if they want/or not to create an empty chat folder. Some may still want to save it as a record of the meeting....

AND ALSO talking about chats, I'd love the see a reminder to save the chat prior to ending the session in case there are new messages after last save or no prior chat saving... this is a feature request.

[PaddyPaddy90]

It does seem like a no brainer fix - don't save empty chats to the computer.