# Cleaning up Storyboard Projects

As you create your storyboard you will add information which at some point will be no longer relevant to the current project. Some of this information will be deleted and some of it will be put aside and not associated with any panels used in your storyboard. All of these unused items take up space and inflate the size of your final project files. Toon Boom Storyboard offers you the opportunity to significantly reduce the size of your project by removing the following:

- _deleted_scene-XXXX not linked to any panels
- _deleted_scene-XXXX directories not linked to any panels
- backup files - all files which extension ends with ~
- audio directory files which are not referenced by any sound sequence
- removed layers these are _deleted_DrawXX in /scene-XXXX/elements/
- remove folders panel -XXXX in <project>library/Scene_Templates/
- all deleted directories, for example, those in the library

The Remove Unused Files command, cleans the history and browses the project directory for unused files and directories and removes them, then saves your project using the existing project name.

THIS PROCEDURE CANNOT BE UNDONE Once you optimize your project files you cannot retrieve any files which were removed during the optimization process. It is highly recommended that you copy all of your project files to another location before starting the optimization process. This will help you in several ways:

- Reuse of the current project’s unused assets in other projects.
- Reintroduction of some previously unused assets into the current project.
- Retrieval of project should a system power failure or other unforeseen event occur during the optimization process.

To optimize your project:

1. Select File> Remove Unused Files. The Remove Unused Files dialog box opens.

Note: Once started this process cannot be undone. Files removed from the project during this process can never be retrieved.

2. There are two options in this dialog box.

- OK

This starts the optimization process and cleans up your project. This process will take several minutes to complete depending on the size of your project and the number of files which have to be removed.

- Cancel

This returns you to the current workspace and does not start the optimization process.

3. Once the process is complete a notification dialogue appears telling you that the process was successful.

4. Click on the OK button in the notification dialog box, you are returned to the current storyboard workspace.