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Move folders in command line with specific string



How to move folders in command line without selecting manually the folders?

Manually moving folders is quite ideal if there are two or three folders that needs to be moved.
But if the folders are quite a lot and doing it manually is a bit tedious; besides chances are there might be folders that will be missed out.

Command lines and some basic editing in notepad can ease the process of moving folders it can be run via batch file or just simply enter the command at the command prompt window.

Assume that all folders have the word “old-data” as part of its folder name. It can be any string as long as it’s common to all the folders that needs to be moved or archived.

First step, is to open a command prompt window then change directory to the folders.

Example: c:\cd sales_data

Then at sales_data directory type:

dir *old-data* /s/b > file_old_data.txt

replace old-data with any string that is common to all folders.

* is used between the string, which basically means that look for folders with this string and don’t care about the other string that comes with it.

Or basically what the command does will look for any folders with old-data as part of its folder name.

/s is used so it will include sub-folders as well; which can be manually taken out from notepad.

> file_old_data.txt – this will redirect the output of dir to file_old_data.txt, text file name can be any file name.


Second step, is to open old_data.txt with notepad.

Notepad output will have something like this:

c:\ sales_data\2017-12-28 Gadgets Plan for PH (old-data)

Depending on the results there might be a few lines of data.

For moving folders, path is not needed; only the folder name.

In notepad click on “edit” and select “replace”. In replace window type the path: c:\ sales_data\ and in the “replace with” leave it empty and click “replace all”.

It will remove all “c:\ sales_data\” or whatever the path there is on the notepad. What will remain is the folder name.

Save the notepad and exit.


Now the actual moving of folders. Type this command to move all folders listed on the notepad file.

for /F "tokens=*" %A in (file_old_data.txt) do move "%A" "Archive_Sales_Data"

file_old_data.txt – replace this name with the filename redirection from the dir command that was used.

"Archive_Sales_Data" – replace this with the folder name in which the folders will be moved.

move "%A" -- is enclosed with double quotes so any folder with spaces will be treated as one string


What the command does, it will read the text file line by line and after reading the data; its output will be executed by the move command to “Archive_Sales_Data”.

The folders that will be moved and “Archive_Sales_Data” must be in the same sub-folder.


If everything goes well, and let’s say there are 50 or 100 folders that needs to be moved. All you have to do is watch until the command prompt comes back with a blinking cursor and the job is done.


Cheers..till next time. 


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