Git pull - Please move or remove them before you can merge

If there are too many files to delete, which is actually a case for me. You can also try the following solution:

1) fetch

2) merge with a strategy. For instance this one works for me:

git.exe merge --strategy=ours master

I just faced the same issue and solved it using the following.First clear tracked files by using :

git clean -d -f

then try git pull origin master

You can view other git clean options by typing git clean -help

Apparently the files were added in remote repository, no matter what was the content of .gitignore file in the origin.

As the files exist in the remote repository, git has to pull them to your local work tree as well and therefore complains that the files already exist.

.gitignore is used only for scanning for the newly added files, it doesn't have anything to do with the files which were already added.

So the solution is to remove the files in your work tree and pull the latest version. Or the long-term solution is to remove the files from the repository if they were added by mistake.

A simple example to remove files from the remote branch is to

$git checkout <brachWithFiles>
$git rm -r *.extension
$git commit -m "fixin...."
$git push

Then you can try the $git merge again

To remove & delete all changes git clean -d -f