How do I copy a file using a wildcard in Windows without appending?

Question

I have an excel file that I download from an vendor FTP site on a daily basis. Every day the file name changes to contain the date and the vendor appends either "actual" or "estimate" to the end of the file.

example:
F_02262014_actual.xlsx
F_02262014_estimate.xlsx
etc.

Because of these slight changes, I'm using a wildcard to copy the file to a consistent name in another directory.

Example:
copy \\Source\\F_02262014* \\Target\\CurrentFile.xlsx

My problem is that whenever I use a wildcard in the copy command, Windows assumes I'm appending several files to one. This causes the file to get corrupted (all contents deleted for some reason).

Is there a command, or series of commands, that will copy the first file matching the file pattern to the desired file name?

Answer 1

You cannot modify the behavior of the copy command in the way that you are asking for. Instead of doing a wildcard copy, try this:

IF EXIST "\Source\F_02262014_actual.xlsx" (copy \Source\F_02262014_actual.xlsx \Target\CurrentFile.xlsx) ELSE (copy \Source\F_02262014_estimate.xlsx \Target\CurrentFile.xlsx)

Answer 2

for %%f in ("\Source\F_02262014*") do copy /y "%%~ff" "\Target\CurrentFile.xlsx"

Written to include in batch file. If this will be executed from command line, replace all %% with %

Answer 3

I can't reproduce your reported problem.

DO you mean the source file is emptied, or that the target is empty?

I'd add the /b switch to the COPY

copy /B \Source\F_02262014* \Target\CurrentFile.xlsx

...worked for me!