Windows 7: 'Dump contents to parent folder' tool

Hello everyone.



I'm new to this Forum but am very much looking forward to learning some new tips and techniques in order to increase my Windows 7 productivity. I do however, already have one idea that I was wondering if anyone could help me with. I am looking to create a script that will help me add a usability feature to Windows Seven which I will now try to describe for you. Essentially, what I would like is a “dump contents to parent folder” function that could be activated through the right-clicking of a folder. Kind of like how you may right-click on a win.rar file and select “extract-here” and it copies the contents to the parent folder. Now I don’t mind whether it copies it or moves it, and I don’t mind whether it deletes the folder or leaves it standing (Although a selection of “Move and delete”, “Move and Keep”, and “Copy and Keep” would be most awesome. Oh yeah, and before I let you mull this request over, I will just pre-empt the response of “You can just go into the folder, copy the files, click backwards and paste them where you want” by saying that I want it for extracting the contents of multiple folders, like extracting all the mp3’s from a whole bunch of album folders and dumping the contents into the My Music folder. If anyone knows of something that can fulfil this function, or would like to make me one, or tell me how I can go about building one for myself, it would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

Johnny Doe (Rob really!)

Windows has this feature already built-in.

Send To on right click context menu.

This will allow you to copy any file or folder with it's contents to the target folder present in Send To command

for an example you wish to add "My Music" folder to Send To command.

Open "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo" where username is your login name.

Create a shortcut for your My Music folder and copy this shortcut to the above Send To folder. Now My Music will appear in SendTo command.

To copy any file or (folder with files) to this folder, right click on this file/folder and select SendTo command and then select My Music.

Send To will allow you to copy the files. It will not move the files.

Ok, but then wont I have to go into that folder and select all the files and "Send them to…" wherever? I mean, first of all, I’ve got the ‘classic shell’ installed which gives me back my ‘copy to’ / ‘send to’ functionality. What I am looking for is a tool that means I dont have to go into the folder and select all the tracks. This is so I can manage my Music / Ipod backup folder where I've got hundereds of albums and the idea is so that I dont have to go into hundreds of different folders and and move all the tracks out a dozen (or however many there may be on each album) at a time. I want to be able to just select all the album folders, right-click them and tell them to extract/dump/copy/move the contents. Like the "extract here" option on a win.rar file, its anot an issue of whether its a copy, a move or even where it's moved to. Its about not having to go into the (huge amount of) folder(s). Thanks for your suggestion though rraod, I probably didn't make myself clear enough. Or, I'm underestimating the usefulness of your method. Or both.

You can use the windows search feature for getting the files in a search window and then use CTRL+A for selecting all the files or SHIFT+clicking selected files in the search window, then use SEND TO command I have explained above.

For example you want all Elton John albums, do a search for ".mp3 Elton John" in Windows search, and once the Elton John songs are gathered in the search window, do the above procedure.

This way you don't have to go in to each folder and collect the music files. You can vary the search criteria and get different files.

Yes, thanks rraod, that is what I've been doing actually. I just thought this tool would have been useful for if you had other things in the folders too. I was just using the music folders as an example. If you want to dump everything out of a bunch of folders and they're all different file types (which is often the way with downloaded albums too where you might have covers, eac files, flacs etc etc) i just think this tool would've been quite nice and useful and not too intrusive or difficult to use. "Right-click; extract contents to parent folder" - so simple. You know, like quite a nice usefulness to difficulty ratio. Anyway, thanks for your suggestions rraod.