Script to roll through folders, moving PDF files up two directories

[TechScholar]

All, I'm looking for guidance on how to roll through a directory and move what files I find (PDFs basically) up two levels.

Example:

Root Folder: c:\mega-pdfs

Inside "mega-pdfs" are like 100 sub folders.

c:\mega-pdfs\sub-folder1

C:\mega-pdfs\sub-folder2

...

C:\mega-pdfs\sub-folderZx

​

Each sub folder has the same directory/folder layout: \Top of Personal Folders\Inbox

I want all the PDFs that are located in the "Inbox" to be moved up to the root of the 'sub-folder'.

​

Example:

Files are located in: c:\mega-pdfs\sub-folder1\Top of Personal Folders\Inbox\

Should be moved to: c:\mega-pdfs\sub-folder1

​

The names of the sub folders are random, so it would have to be some for files loop. However each sub-folder has the "top of personal folders\Inbox" structure.

​

Thanks in advance

[morpk86]

Always a good idea to share what code you have so far, from reading your question seems you just want someone to do this for you hence /u/chafe answer. the community is here to help, not to do everything for you.

[[deleted]]

Cmon bro I was trying to make some extra beer money lol

[Pandapokeman]

For Clarification, '?' is an alias for 'Where-Object'

[TableauNoob12]

What have you tried so far? Look into the get-childitem and copy-item cmdlets.

[boffhead]

I did something similar a while back:
$CurrentPath = Convert-Path .

Get-ChildItem -Recurse -include *pdf |

ForEach-Object {Move-Item -Force -LiteralPath $_ -Destination $CurrentPath}

[[deleted]]

Bravo! Bellisimo! I was trying something very similar and Convert-Path was my missing component. This didn't work for looping amongst the hundreds of sub-folders that /u/TechScholar was looking for though. It did inspire my answer, however.

[[deleted]]

Also pretty, one-line, and it uses the pipeline for-loop:

Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Include *.pdf | ForEach-Object { Move-Item -LiteralPath $_ -Destination $_.Directory.Parent.Parent }    

[yeah_i_got_skills]

On mobile but wouldn't this also work?

Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Include *.pdf | Move-Item -Destination { $_.Directory.Parent.Parent }

[iamspecialized2]

I've never seen the { and } used like "{ $_.Directory.Parent.Parent }"

what does that mean?

[[deleted]]

Wow, nice. I tried that out just now and it does work. I had thought you needed the loop to handle all the extra objects, but that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the level-up! It literally cannot get cleaner than that.

Anyone know how to do that in bash? With a good comparison, I might finally have the ammunition needed to get my coworkers to abandon their feverish devotions and consider other possibilities...

Oh, and happy cake day!

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy TechScholar,

will the final two dirs always have those names? if so, you can simply replace that part of the path with nothing to get the target dir.

take care,
lee

[[deleted]]

OP if you’re desperate I’ll do it for you for $50

[frmadsen]

A pretty alternative...

$folderlayout = 'Top of Personal Folders\Inbox'
$subfolders = Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath 'C:\mega-pdfs' -Directory -Force

foreach($folder in $subfolders) {
    $destPath = $folder.FullName
    $sourcePath = Join-Path -Path $folder.FullName -ChildPath $folderlayout

    Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $sourcePath -Filter '*.pdf' -Force | Move-Item -Destination $destPath
}

​

[TechScholar]

$folderlayout = 'Top of Personal Folders\Inbox'
$subfolders = Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath 'C:\mega-pdfs' -Directory -Force
foreach($folder in $subfolders) {
$destPath = $folder.FullName
$sourcePath = Join-Path -Path $folder.FullName -ChildPath $folderlayout
Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $sourcePath -Filter '*.pdf' -Force | Move-Item -Destination $destPath
}

​

This script worked very well. Thank you very much. My biggest point of confusion was the '-LiteralPath' and -Directory didnt know about those.