I tried with -force but I still get error message
Copy-Item : An item with the specified name C:\folder2 already
exists.
Copy-Item 'c:\folder1' -Destination 'c:\folder2' -force
You can create the destination folder first and then copy everything inside the source folder by adding \* to the path:
# first create the destination folder if it does not already exist
$null = New-Item -Path 'c:\folder2' -ItemType Directory -Force
# then copy all from the source folder to the destination
Copy-Item -Path 'c:\folder1\*' -Destination 'c:\folder2' -Recurse -Force
By using switch -Force on the New-Item command, the cmdlet returns either the object of a newly created folder or the object of an existing folder.
In both cases, we do not need that output, so we'll ignore it using $null =
After searching for a wile I need to post my question here:
I want to do a simple task:
copy-item -path "C:\Folder Copied" -destination "C:\Folder Copied_New" -recurse
Assuming the dir "Folder Copied_New" doenst exist in "C:", PS will create a folder, and copy the folder (and its content) "C:\Folder Copied" to "Folder Copied_New"
HOWEVER, if you execute the command a second time, the following happens:
Powershell created: "C:\Folder Copied_New\Folder Copied" (content "Test.txt" was also copied to this newly created folder...
The 3rd time you execute the command, it ll say that the folder already exists...
So my question:
After I run the command a 2nd time, PS should throw an error, that "Folder Copied_New". How do I do that?
I tried copying and renaming the new folder, using and NOT using "" in the paths, but nothing worked. I do think of using -Testpath, but I thought I ask the community for a simplier (BestPractice) approache.
Thanks in advance for reading and advising!
Well explained in another question but same issue
Not an answer but to long to write in comments.
Can you run following script and show us the output?
$root = "$($env:TEMP)\test"
$source = "$($root)\Logfiles"
$destination = "$($root)\Drawings\Logs"
# Verify folders don't exist yet
if (Test-Path $source) {Throw}
if (Test-Path $destination) {Throw}
# Set up
New-Item $source, $destination -ItemType Directory -Force | Out-Null # Create folders
New-Item "$($source)\testfile" -ItemType File -Force | Out-Null # Create a testfile
# Show files/folders before copy
Write-Output "Before copy"
Get-ChildItem $root -Recurse | select fullname
# Copy first time
Copy-Item -path $source -destination $destination -Recurse -ErrorAction Continue
Write-Output "After first time copy"
Get-ChildItem $root -Recurse | select fullname
# Copy second time
Copy-Item -path $source -destination $destination -Recurse -ErrorAction Continue
Write-Output "After second time copy"
Get-ChildItem $root -Recurse | select fullname
# Copy third time
Copy-Item -path $source -destination $destination -Recurse -ErrorAction Continue
Write-Output "After third time copy"
Get-ChildItem $root -Recurse | select fullname
# Clean up
Remove-Item $source, $destination -Force -Recurse | Out-Null
On my computer, I don't observe any abnormal behavior. The source folder get's copied to destination after the first time. The second run does not alter anything, neither does the third run.
That behavior is the default:
Let's say you want to copy and rename an item, so you are doing this:
Copy-Item -path source.txt -Destination destination.txt
You expect a file named destination.txt with the content of source.txt.
If you want to copy a file but without renaming it you do this:
Copy-Item -path source.txt -Destination C:\test
You expect the file source.txt to apear in C:\test. If C:\test didn't exist it will be created.
Now let's try to copy a folder while the destination does not exist.
Copy-Item -path C:\test -Destination D:\toast
The destination didn't exist so you created it by copying the source folder to the destination. The content of the destination will be the same as the source. The folder D:\toast is the same as C:\test but it got renamed in the process.
However if you provide a destination path where the source object (folder) is going to be located, it will be located in there.
Copy-Item -path C:\test -Destination D:\toast
D:\toast did exist from our previouse action so a copy of C:\test will be created in there: D:\toast\test
When destination folder exists the right way of copying files is defined here
Copy-Item 'C:\Source\*' 'C:\Destination' -Recurse -Force
If destination folder doesn't exist, some files in the source subfolders are copied straight into destination, without keeping original folder structure.
Is there a way to have a single Copy-Item command to address both cases and persist folder structure? Or is it too much to ask from Powershell?
You may want to use a if statement with test-path
this is the script i used to fix this problem
$ValidPath = Test-Path -Path c:\temp
If ($ValidPath -eq $False){
New-Item -Path "c:\temp" -ItemType directory
Copy-Item -Path "c:\temp" -Destination "c:\temp2" -force
}
Else {
Copy-Item -Path "c:\temp" -Destination "c:\temp2" -force
}
I am trying to copy a folder from the local computer to a remote server. It works but if the destination folder already exists it is creating a duplicate folder inside it.
copy-item -Path C:\test -Destination \\server\F$\testpassed -recurse -Force
To copy only the files from within C:\test to the \\server\F$\testpassed folder you need to use the following command:
Copy-Item -Path C:\test\* -Destination \\server\F$\testpassed -Recurse
\* is a wildcard for anything within the folder, and will cause Copy-Item to copy anything within the folder to the Destination. You could also use *.txt to only copy txt files if you wanted only a specific file type to be copied.
EDIT:
I would test for the presence of $TARGETDIR and then create it if needed. This way you only have a single copy command.
$TargetDir = "\\server\F$\testpassed"
$SourceDir = "C:\test"
if(!(Test-Path -Path $TARGETDIR)) {New-Item -Path $TARGETDIR -ItemType Directory}
Copy-Item -Path "$SourceDir\*" -Destination $TARGETDIR -Recurse
Using source path in below way will solve your issue
Copy-Item -Path C:\test*
Try
$Source = Get-childitem C:\test -Recurse
copy-item -Path $Source.FullName -Destination C:\temp -recurse -Force
Use GC to stop getting the folder as well as the contents.
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