Flatten Files in Subfolders on Windows 7 (cmd or PowerShell)

I have a large volume of files organized in a very hierarchical folder structure. In this structure, the file that I care about is always located in the lowest level of the folders. As such, I'd like to flatten the directory so that it's easier to access the files that I care about. However, I'd like to preserve the 2 higher levels (Person & Project) of the folder structure.

Here's an example of the EXISTING folder directory:

• Directory
  • Tom
    • Project 1
      • Subfolder Level A
        • FileA
      • FileB
    • Project 2
      • Subfolder Level C
        • FileC
      • FileD
  • Jerry
    • Project 1
      • Subfolder Level E
        • FileE

Here's an example of the DESIRED folder directory:

• Directory
  • Tom
    • Project 1
      • FileA
      • FileB
    • Project 2
      • FileC
      • FileD
  • Jerry
    • Project 1
      • FileE

I have tried doing something like this, however this flattens all of the files into a single directory:

for /r %f in (*) do @copy "%f" .

However, this produces:

• Directory
  • FileA
  • FileB
  • FileC
  • FileD
  • FileE

I'd appreciate any guidance that you can offer. Thanks a lot!

4 Answers

Here is a Powershell approach. It gets a list of the folders at the level that you want. Then it moves all the sub files up to that level. it will also remove the sub folders.

$Rootfolder = Dir directory\*\* -Directory
ForEach($folder in $Rootfolder)
{ Dir $folder.fullname -Recurse -File | Copy-Item -Destination $folder.fullname Dir $folder.fullname -Recurse -Directory | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse -WhatIf
}

If you want it to delete, remove the -WhatIf from the last line.

Throw a couple of extra for loops around the one that works then.

e.g. First change to the name folder, then the project folder, looping through both levels.

for /D %n in (*) do ( pushd %n for /D %p in (*) do ( pushd %p for /r %f in (*) do @copy "%f" . popd ) popd
)

If you put this in a bat file, remember to replace % with %%

7

@echo off
pushd yourDirectory
for /d %%A in (*) do for /d %%B in ("%%A\*") do for /d %%C in ("%%B\*") do ( pushd "%%C" for /r %%F in (*) do move /y "%%F" "%%B" >nul popd rd /q /s "%%C"
)
popd

%%A contains something like "yourDirectory\Tom"
%%B contains something like "yourDirectory\Tom\Project 1"
%%C contains something like "yourDirectory\Tom\Project 1\subdirectory1" %%F contains a file to move, to any depth

At first I thought I could eliminate PUSHD/POPD and use

for /r "%%C" %%F in (*) do ... THIS DOES NOT WORK

But that doesn't work - the value after /R cannot use a FOR variable or delayed expansion because of how the command is parsed.

I tweaked @ScottC's answer and used the following code:

for /D %%n in (*) do ( pushd %%n for /D %%p in (*) do ( pushd %%p for /r %%f in (*.ppt) do ( move "%%f" "[ROOT_PATH_THAT_I_WANT]\%%n\%%p". ) popd ) popd
)

I ran this solution as a .bat file, which is why I used %% instead of %.

%%n = name (aka C:\Directory\Name)
%%p = project (aka C:\Directory\Name\Project)
%%f = file to be moved (recursively drilling through the folders and moving them up to the project level)

Ultimately, I wasn't able to get @dbenham's suggestion of deleting the empty folders to work, so I ended up using this utility: . So far it seems pretty intuitive and like it's taking care of the problem without much effort from me :)

Thanks for the help everybody!

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