CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershellcopy-item
Bharat Patel
Bharat Patel

Reputation: 21

PowerShell 5 Copy-Item not working

I am trying to copy all .pdf files from all folders and sub folder (dirs. and subdirs).

Folder1
  1.pdf
  2.pdf
Folder1\Foder2\3.pdf
Folder1\Folder2\4.pdf
Folder1\Foder2\Folder3\5.pdf
Folder1\Folder2\Folder3\6.pdf

First I used

 $source = "c:\Folder1\"
 $desti = "D:\foderA\"
 PS> Get-ChildItem -recurse $source -Filter "*.pdf"

It displays all the files in dir and sub dir but when I try to use copy-Item I get the error.

 PS> Get-ChildItem -recurse $source -Filter "*.pdf" | % {Copy-Item $_    -destination $desti}

Error: Copy-Item : Cannot find path 'C:\Folder1\Folder2.... because it does not exist. Error points to source being non-existent. What am I doing wrong? Is it because I have read only on the source drive\Folder?

Thanks

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1489

Answers (3)

Bill_Stewart
Bill_Stewart

Reputation: 24525

You can pipe the output objects from Get-ChildItem directly to Copy-Item (i.e., you don't need % [which is an alias for ForEach-Object]); e.g.:

Get-ChildItem -Recurse $source -Filter "*.pdf" -File | Copy-Item -Destination $desti

The -File parameter restricts the search only to files.

Upvotes: 3

Kellen Stuart
Kellen Stuart

Reputation: 8895

cp -Recurse C:\path\to\search\*.pdf C:\path\to\output\copies

Upvotes: 0

Donavan White
Donavan White

Reputation: 1126

You almost have it right, $_ is only grabbing the filename, so you lose the path and it tries to use the path your running the script from. Use this instead which will keep the full path.

Get-ChildItem -Recurse $source -Filter "*.pdf" | % {Copy-Item $_.FullName -Destination $desti}

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions