# EPUBCheck PKG-014: empty folder in the EPUB, how to fix it

Source: https://epubcc.com/epubcheck/pkg-014/ (updated 2026-11-04)

EPUBCheck PKG-014 is a warning message: “The EPUB contains empty directory "…".” The EPUB archive contains an empty folder. It does no harm to reading apps, and EPUBCheck reports it only so you can remove what serves no purpose.

- Official message (EPUBCheck 5.4.0): The EPUB contains empty directory "%1$s".
- Default severity: Warning

## Typical causes

- A folder left behind after moving or deleting files while editing the book.
- A template that creates folders such as fonts or audio even when the book has none.

## How to fix it

1. Find the folder named in the message in the book's source.
2. Delete the empty folder and rebuild the archive.
3. Rebuild the archive with the mimetype file first and stored uncompressed, for example from the folder that contains the book: zip -X0 book.epub mimetype and then zip -rX9 book.epub META-INF OEBPS (use your own folder names).

## When it's not this

It is unrelated to missing files: a reference to a file that is not there is RSC-007.

## Sources

- EPUB 3.3, §4 Open Container Format (OCF): https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-33/#sec-ocf (read 2026-11-04)

Message text and severity: EPUBCheck (W3C, BSD-3-Clause). Explanation: EpubCC.