How can I move all the files from one folder to another using the command line?
What is the best command to move all files from one folder to another?
I want to do this from within a batch file.
You can use move for this. The documentation from help move states:
Moves files and renames files and directories.
To move one or more files:
MOVE [/Y | /-Y] [drive:][path]filename1[,...] destination
To rename a directory:
MOVE [/Y | /-Y] [drive:][path]dirname1 dirname2
[drive:][path]filename1 Specifies the location and name of the file
or files you want to move.
destination Specifies the new location of the file. Destination
can consist of a drive letter and colon, a
directory name, or a combination. If you are moving
only one file, you can also include a filename if
you want to rename the file when you move it.
[drive:][path]dirname1 Specifies the directory you want to rename.
dirname2 Specifies the new name of the directory.
/Y Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to
overwrite an existing destination file.
/-Y Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite
an existing destination file.
The switch /Y may be present in the COPYCMD environment variable.
This may be overridden with /-Y on the command line. Default is
to prompt on overwrites unless MOVE command is being executed from
within a batch script.
See the following transcript for an example where it initially shows the qq1 and qq2 directories as having three and no files respectively. Then, we do the move and we find that the three files have been moved from qq1 to qq2 as expected.
C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents>dir qq1
Volume in drive C is Primary
Volume Serial Number is 04F7-0E7B
Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq1
20/01/2011 11:36 AM <DIR> .
20/01/2011 11:36 AM <DIR> ..
20/01/2011 11:36 AM 13 xx1
20/01/2011 11:36 AM 13 xx2
20/01/2011 11:36 AM 13 xx3
3 File(s) 39 bytes
2 Dir(s) 20,092,547,072 bytes free
C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents>dir qq2
Volume in drive C is Primary
Volume Serial Number is 04F7-0E7B
Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq2
20/01/2011 11:36 AM <DIR> .
20/01/2011 11:36 AM <DIR> ..
0 File(s) 0 bytes
2 Dir(s) 20,092,547,072 bytes free
C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents>move qq1\* qq2
C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq1\xx1
C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq1\xx2
C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq1\xx3
C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents>dir qq1
Volume in drive C is Primary
Volume Serial Number is 04F7-0E7B
Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq1
20/01/2011 11:37 AM <DIR> .
20/01/2011 11:37 AM <DIR> ..
0 File(s) 0 bytes
2 Dir(s) 20,092,547,072 bytes free
C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents>dir qq2
Volume in drive C is Primary
Volume Serial Number is 04F7-0E7B
Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq2
20/01/2011 11:37 AM <DIR> .
20/01/2011 11:37 AM <DIR> ..
20/01/2011 11:36 AM 13 xx1
20/01/2011 11:36 AM 13 xx2
20/01/2011 11:36 AM 13 xx3
3 File(s) 39 bytes
2 Dir(s) 20,092,547,072 bytes free
move c:\sourcefolder c:\targetfolder
will work, but you will end up with a structure like this:
c:\targetfolder\sourcefolder\[all the subfolders & files]
If you want to move just the contents of one folder to another, then this should do it:
SET src_folder=c:\srcfold
SET tar_folder=c:\tarfold
for /f %%a IN ('dir "%src_folder%" /b') do move "%src_folder%\%%a" "%tar_folder%\"
pause
This command will move all the files in originalfolder to destinationfolder.
MOVE c:\originalfolder\* c:\destinationfolder
(However it wont move any sub-folders to the new location.)
To lookup the instructions for the MOVE command type this in a windows command prompt:
MOVE /?
robocopy seems to be the most versatile. See it's other options in the help
robocopy /?
robocopy SRC DST /E /MOV
Lookup move /? on Windows and man mv on Unix systems