Can I move files from nested folders with a single command?

[badspell68]

Is it possible to move files from a location that has files contained in many folder of witch many are deeply nested in layers of other folders using a single command or some software tool? I would rather not spend hours copy and pasting files and trying to keep track of what I have moved.

Thank!

 

[badspell68]

Any ideas?

 

[Kaktussoft]

You want to move 1 folder with many folders/files in it to another destination?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I think he wants to move, not copy.

There's a move command, but I don't see a switch for subdirectories like the copy command has.

I'm sure there is a semi-slick way of doing a move with all subdirectories, but it's beyond my knowledge level.

 

[Kaktussoft]

I think he wants to move, not copy.

There's a move command, but I don't see a switch for subdirectories like the copy command has.

I'm sure there is a semi-slick way of doing a move with all subdirectories, but it's beyond my knowledge level.

Just CUT the source and paste it somewhere alse. whnat's the problem of OP?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Just CUT the source and paste it somewhere alse. whnat's the problem of OP?

I don't know any more about his problem than you do.

Apparently, he wants a command line option rather than hand-selecting a bunch of files.

 

[MilesAhead]

If you mean recursively copy files without duplicating the folder structure, into a destination folder, rcopy will do it if the destination folder exists.

It does a copy, not a move. But you could do it in two commands. Example: the command prompt is open with C:\MyFolder as current directory. You would use these commands to move all srt subtitles to C:\MySubs

rcopy *.srt C:\MySubs
del *.srt /s

Edit: Make sure the rcopy destination is not inside the source folder tree. Otherwise the del /s command will delete them from the dest folder.

 

[MilesAhead]

( If some of you wonder why rcopy instead of just recursive copy, rcopy will skip the folder if the source and dest are the same. This enables copying to a dest in the source folder tree. I mainly wrote it to copy all subtitles to one folder for processing without deleting the originals. )

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Thanks for that Miles. I might be able to use that myself.

I assume you might have over-write issues if you had 2 files in separate folders that had the same name. Would that command overwrite, skip, or alter the name as necessary?

There's a freeware program out there called Suction (suction.exe) that supposedly moves files "flat", without copying the folder structure. I ran across it a month ago, but haven't tried it.

And I think it can be done from Powershell, but I don't know the command.

 

[MilesAhead]

There's a /n switch for no overwite. Run with no params it shows a usage dialog. Also it has a sanity check. If the total files to copy are > 128 it prompts to continue. See included Readme.txt.

 

[badspell68]

I'm looking to "COPY" all "files" from multiple folders of a HD (some of the folders also have sub-folders) to a USB thumb drive so that all the files, no folders, reside on the thumb drive.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Get a tool like XXCOPY
http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm

Use it to copy all the files to a single directory

eg
xxcopy source destination /s /sx
This would copy all files from the source, including subdirectories into a
single directory (destination)

 

[MilesAhead]

I'm looking to "COPY" all "files" from multiple folders of a HD (some of the folders also have sub-folders) to a USB thumb drive so that all the files, no folders, reside on the thumb drive.

If X: is the thumb drive and you want to copy to the root you could do like

for %s in (c:\folder1 d:\foldera\folderb c:\yuk) do rcopy /n %s\*.* X:\

unzip rcopy.zip to a folder in your path so you can rust type rcopy without the full path.

/n just means do not overwite if a destination file has the same name. See included Readme.txt

Edit: you could use a tool like RichCopy or xcopy or robocopy but for this you don't have to mess with switches(except for /n) as rcopy is always recursive.

 

[badspell68]

With Xcopy how would I copy all files from the souse, regardless of what folders or sub-folders they are in, to one source?

And how would I do this with richcopy?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I don't know how to do that (or if it can be done) with xcopy without duplicating the folder structure.

But you can do it with xxcopy that is downloadable from Kaktussoft's link in post 12.

This command:

xxcopy /sr d:\temp d:\test

will copy all files from D temp to D test and omit the folder structure. The r in the command appends the name of the source folder to the right edge of the file on the destination, to avoid over-writing files in the source directory tree that happen to have identical file names.

So, a file named dog.jpg within the animals folder under D temp will be renamed to dog.jpg`animals on D test. And a file named dog.jpg within the pets folder on D temp will be renamed to dog.jpg`pets on D test. Otherwise, you'd either over-write or skip the second dog.jpg file if copying to a single folder.

You can later run xxcopy source destination /srr to reconstruct the folder structure if necessary.

If you change the command to

xxcopy /s d:\temp d:\test

the folder structure will be included.

 

[MilesAhead]

I only used RichCopy once to copy Windows.old over the network. You can get it here:
RichCopy - Free download and software reviews - CNET Download.com

For what it can do and how you need to read the documentation. But it's a good free tool for the toolbox.

 

[badspell68]

I finally found a solution to my original post! It moves files from nested folders and disorganized locations. It will move any files, regardless of location or level of folder nesting. It copy's the files by extension type and worked great for organizing and moving my music file collection.
https://youtu.be/BAKIBQvKafE
Copy-By-Extension | "Automatically & Easily Copy or Move Files" Regardless of Location or Drive/Folder Structure!

 

[stsaerox]

move %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla S:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla

I want to run this command but the destination directory and path doesn't exist. I want to create it by cmd but I want to move only files and folders in "Mozilla" folder. Is it possible?

It is a useful way to keep write down to a SSD. I'm going to use it along with those commands:
mklink /j %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla S:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla
mklink /j %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Mozilla S:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Mozilla

 

[GokAy]

Why not just move the Mozilla folder and execute the junction command?

 

[stsaerox]

I need to do it by cmd because I want to do it in many pc's with SSD. I want a practical and automatic way to do it because It cost me more time.

Also the script I'll make will be executed for every new user that it is created in each pc.