foreach ($file in Get-ChildItem -Path $srcRoot -File -Include "*.pdf" -Force -Recurse {
Above is just a line out of my script that is moving files from one directory to another. Long story short.. My script is working and has been for months. However, today I came across where it didnt move two files that were named like the following.
Thisismyfile.pdf2.pdf
Thisisanotherfile.pdf2.pdf
Now like I said.. the script has been working fine until these files came about. Of course I told the users to make sure they name files correctly ect.. but I dont know why it still didnt move those files. It still contains "*.pdf" as an extenstion.. so what gives?
I suspect that files are not moved in scenario where you have file in folder A with the same name as in folder B. Moving files to the one destination folder will cause name collision with error like Move-Item : Cannot create a file when that file already exists.
If that is the case, please use one of snippets from this answer: Powershell Move-Item Rename If File Exists
I placed few .pdf files (named like a.pdf.pdf, b.pdf.pdf ...) in src directory, running snippet below moves those files to dst folder correctly.
$srcRoot = "C:\Users\$env:username\Desktop\src\"
foreach ($file in Get-ChildItem -Path $srcRoot -File -Include "*.pdf" -Force -Recurse)
{
Move-Item -Path $file -Destination "C:\Users\$env:username\Desktop\dst\"
}
Here is a section of code from a larger script. The goal is to recurse through a source directory, then copy all the files it finds into a destination directory, sorted into subdirectories by file extension. It works great the first time I run it. If I run it again, instead of overwriting existing files, it fails with this error on each file that already exists in the destination:
Copy-Item : Cannot overwrite the item with itself
I try, whenever possible, to write scripts that are idempotent but I havn't been able to figure this one out. I would prefer not to add a timestamp to the destination file's name; I'd hate to end up with thirty versions of the exact same file. Is there a way to do this without extra logic to check for a file's existance and delete it if it's already there?
## Parameters for source and destination directories.
$Source = "C:\Temp"
$Destination = "C:\Temp\Sorted"
# Build list of files to sort.
$Files = Get-ChildItem -Path $Source -Recurse | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer }
# Copy the files in the list to destination folder, sorted in subfolders by extension.
foreach ($File in $Files) {
$Extension = $File.Extension.Replace(".","")
$ExtDestDir = "$Destination\$Extension"
# Check to see if the folder exists, if not create it
$Exists = Test-Path $ExtDestDir
if (!$Exists) {
# Create the directory because it doesn't exist
New-Item -Path $ExtDestDir -ItemType "Directory" | Out-Null
}
# Copy the file
Write-Host "Copying $File to $ExtDestDir"
Copy-Item -Path $File.FullName -Destination $ExtDestDir -Force
}
$Source = "C:\Temp"
$Destination = "C:\Temp\Sorted"
You are trying to copy files from a source directory to a sub directory of that source directory. The first time it works because that directory is empty. The second time it doesn't because you are enumerating files of that sub directory too and thus attempt to copy files over themselves.
If you really need to copy the files into a sub directory of the source directory, you have to exclude the destination directory from enumeration like this:
$Files = Get-ChildItem -Path $Source -Directory |
Where-Object { $_.FullName -ne $Destination } |
Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse
Using a second Get-ChildItem call at the beginning, which only enumerates first-level directories, is much faster than filtering the output of the Get-ChildItem -Recurse call, which would needlessly process each file of the destination directory.
I am trying to copy all the files in a directory that contains many subfolders into a single separate folder. When the code is run again, rather than replacing each file in the destination folder, it should skip files that have the same timestamp and only replace those that are older.
I have used robocopy to skip the copying of files that are of the current version/older in the destination folder. However, robocopy only copies the entire directory along with its folder structure so I am unable to obtain the desired folder with a list of all the files from the source.
I have also used get child-item and then copy-item. However, although this is able to get rid of the folder structure, it overwrites each file for each iteration and is thus time-consuming.
So what I want is to combine the capabilities of robocopy and copy-item. Note that there are no specific pattern to the files that I am to copy. It is simply to COPY each file in the subdirectories that are EITHER of a NEWER version or NON-existing into a single folder.
#For copying and ease of updating destination folder
robocopy /purge /np /S /xo 'source' 'destination'
#To copy items into the destination folder without keeping folder structure
Get-ChildItem -Path 'source' -Recurse -File | Copy-Item -Destination 'destination'
Was unable to combine both, So I am stuck with using the 'copy-item' code, which is quite time consuming when copying/updating large amounts of files.
The purpose of robocopy is to preserve the folder structure. If you want to mangle subfolders robocopy is not the right tool. Use the Get-ChildItem approach, group the results by file name, sort each group by date, pick the most recent file from each group, and copy it if the corresponding destination file either doesn't exist or is older.
Something like this should do what you want:
Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\source' -Recurse -File |
Group-Object Name |
ForEach-Object {
$src = $_.Group | Sort-Object | Select-Object -Last 1
$dst = Join-Path 'C:\destination' $src.Name
if (-not (Test-Path $dst) -or ($src.LastWriteTime -gt (Get-Item $dst).LastWriteTime)) {
$src | Copy-Item -Destination $dst
}
}
I have some files in a folder with no extension file. I want to copy all the files to another folder and change their extension to .txt.
I tried this code, but it still errors for creating the destination file.
$JOB = Copy-Item -Path C:\Users\XX\Documents\Folder1* -Destination "C:\Users\XX\Documents\Folder2"
Rename-Item -Path C:\Users\XX\Documents\Folder2\* -NewName *.TXT
Get-ChildItem -Path .\Folder1 -File |
ForEach-Object { Copy-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination ".\Folder2\$($_.BaseName).txt" }
# Alternatively without ForEach-Object (see note below)
Get-ChildItem -Path .\Folder1 -File |
Copy-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination { ".\Folder2\$($_.BaseName).txt" }
That should do the job. Keep in mind it will work only for one level, if you want recursive copy of folder structure, you'll have to modify the script slightly.
Basically, what's happening here is you find all the files and then pipe them to Copy-Item constructing destination path with BaseName property of source file (which doesn't have extension included, in comparison to Name property).
NOTE: as -Path accepts pipeline input (see docs here), you don't need to use ForEach-Object. However, it might still be useful for visibility (depending on your preferences).
Credits to #LotPings for noticing the above.
I'm trying to copy a file to a new location, maintaining directory structure.
$source = "c:\some\path\to\a\file.txt"
destination = "c:\a\more\different\path\to\the\file.txt"
Copy-Item $source $destination -Force -Recurse
But I get a DirectoryNotFoundException:
Copy-Item : Could not find a part of the path 'c:\a\more\different\path\to\the\file.txt'
The -recurse option only creates a destination folder structure if the source is a directory. When the source is a file, Copy-Item expects the destination to be a file or directory that already exists. Here are a couple ways you can work around that.
Option 1: Copy directories instead of files
$source = "c:\some\path\to\a\dir"; $destination = "c:\a\different\dir"
# No -force is required here, -recurse alone will do
Copy-Item $source $destination -Recurse
Option 2: 'Touch' the file first and then overwrite it
$source = "c:\some\path\to\a\file.txt"; $destination = "c:\a\different\file.txt"
# Create the folder structure and empty destination file, similar to
# the Unix 'touch' command
New-Item -ItemType File -Path $destination -Force
Copy-Item $source $destination -Force
Alternatively, with PS3.0 onwards, you can simply use the New-Item to create the target folder directly, without having to create a "dummy" file, e.g. ...
New-Item -Type dir \\target\1\2\3\4\5
...will happily create the \\target\1\2\3\4\5 structure irrespective of how much of it already exists.
Here's a oneliner to do this. Split-Path retrieves the parent folder, New-Item creates it and then Copy-Item copies the file. Please note that the destination file will have the same filename as the source file. Also, this won't work if you need to copy multiple files to the same folder as with the second file you'll get An item with the specified name <destination direcory name> already exists error.
Copy-Item $source -Destination (New-Item -Path (Split-Path -Path $destination) -Type Directory)
I had files in a single folder in Windows 7 that I wanted to rename and copy to nonexistent folders.
I used the following PowerShell script, which defines a Copy-New-Item function as a wrapper for the Test-Item, New-Item, and Copy-Item cmdlets:
function Copy-New-Item {
$SourceFilePath = $args[0]
$DestinationFilePath = $args[1]
If (-not (Test-Path $DestinationFilePath)) {
New-Item -ItemType File -Path $DestinationFilePath -Force
}
Copy-Item -Path $SourceFilePath -Destination $DestinationFilePath
}
Copy-New-Item schema_mml3_mathml3_rnc schema\mml3\mathml3.rnc
# More of the same...
Copy-New-Item schema_svg11_svg_animation_rnc schema\svg11\svg-animation.rnc
# More of the same...
Copy-New-Item schema_html5_assertions_sch schema\html5\assertions.sch
# More of the same...
(Note that, in this case, the source file names have no file extension.)
If the destination file path does not exist, the function creates an empty file in that path, forcing the creation of any nonexistent directories in the file path. (If Copy-Item can do all that by itself, I could not see how to do it from the documentation.)
It is coming late, but as I stumbled upon this question looking for a solution to a similar problem, the cleanest one I found elsewhere is using robocopy instead of Copy-Item. I needed to copy the whole file structure together with the files, that's easily achieved via
robocopy "sourcefolder" "destinationfolder" "file.txt" /s
Detail about robocopy: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy
None of the current answers worked for me to fix the Could not find a part of the path error raised by Copy-Item. After some research and testing, I discovered this error can be raised if the Destination path goes over the 260 character Windows path length limit.
What I mean by that is: if you supply a path to the Destination argument of Copy-Item and any of the files you are copying would exceed the 260 character limit when copied to the Destination folder, Copy-Item will raise the Could not find a part of the path error.
The fix is to shorten your Destination path, or to shorten/flatten the folder structure in the source directory that you are trying to copy.
May be Helpfull:
$source = 'c:\some\path\to\a\file.txt'
$dest = 'c:\a\more\different\path\to\the\file.txt'
$dest_dir = 'c:\a\more\different\path\to\the\'
[System.IO.Directory]::CreateDirectory($dest_dir);
if(-not [System.IO.File]::Exists($dest))
{
[System.IO.File]::Copy($source,$dest);
}
I have been digging around and found a lot of solutions to this issue, all being some alteration not just a straight copy-item command. Grant it some of these questions predate PS 3.0 so the answers are not wrong but using powershell 3.0 I was finally able to accomplish this using the -Container switch for copy-item.
Copy-Item $from $to -Recurse -Container
this was the test i ran, no errors and destination folder represented the same folder structure.
New-Item -ItemType dir -Name test_copy
New-Item -ItemType dir -Name test_copy\folder1
New-Item -ItemType file -Name test_copy\folder1\test.txt
#NOTE: with no \ at the end of the destination the file is created in the root of the destination, does not create the folder1 container
#Copy-Item D:\tmp\test_copy\* D:\tmp\test_copy2 -Recurse -Container
#if the destination does not exists this created the matching folder structure and file with no errors
Copy-Item D:\tmp\test_copy\* D:\tmp\test_copy2\ -Recurse -Container