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I'm trying to use a .bat file to go into a folder, and take all photos within it and its subfolders, and place them all into another directory. I know how to copy the folder exactly, with all subfolders remaining in place when copied with

@ECHO OFF
XCOPY E:\FromFolderNameX C:\toFolderNameY /m /y

but I only want all of the photos to be in one folder in the end, no subfolders. Can this be done with a batch file?

Blake Thompson
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1 Answers1

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  • I am assuming that you want to copy (not move) the photos from the subtree starting at E:\FromFolderNameX into the directory C:\toFolderNameY.

  • I am assuming that by "photos" you mean .jpg files.

  • The one-line interactive command is

    for /r E:\FromFolderNameX %p in (*.jpg) do copy /y "%~p" C:\ToFolderNameY

  • If instead of JPG files you want to copy all files, just replace *.jpg with *.

  • If instead of an interactive one liner you want a batch file, the core of the batch file would be

    for /r "%~1" %%p in (*.jpg) do copy "%%~p" "%~2"

(%1 is the first positional argument = the top of the subtree from where you want to copy the files. %2 is the second positional argument = the destination directory.)

In production, the batch file would probably check that the directories %1 and %2 exist and are really directories; and it should probably accept an optional third argument giving the pattern of the files to be copied.

Enter for /? to read more about how for /r works.

AlexP
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  • When I run that one-line interactive command, I get "~p C:\toFolderNameY was unexpected at this time." What does the "%~p" do, and why is it giving me this error? I did place that line into a bat file and ran it. – Blake Thompson Jul 30 '18 at 20:59
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    @BlakeThompson: I gave both the form for interactive use and the form for batch use. You cannot take the interactive form and put in a batch file; at a minimum, you need to change all `%` into `%%`. – AlexP Jul 30 '18 at 21:05