How can I move all the files from one folder to another using the command line?

Question

What is the best command to move all files from one folder to another?

I want to do this from within a batch file.

Answer 1

You can use move for this. The documentation from help move states:

Moves files and renames files and directories.

To move one or more files:
MOVE [/Y | /-Y] [drive:][path]filename1[,...] destination

To rename a directory:
MOVE [/Y | /-Y] [drive:][path]dirname1 dirname2

  [drive:][path]filename1 Specifies the location and name of the file
                          or files you want to move.
  destination             Specifies the new location of the file. Destination
                          can consist of a drive letter and colon, a
                          directory name, or a combination. If you are moving
                          only one file, you can also include a filename if
                          you want to rename the file when you move it.
  [drive:][path]dirname1  Specifies the directory you want to rename.
  dirname2                Specifies the new name of the directory.

  /Y                      Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to
                          overwrite an existing destination file.
  /-Y                     Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite
                          an existing destination file.

The switch /Y may be present in the COPYCMD environment variable.
This may be overridden with /-Y on the command line.  Default is
to prompt on overwrites unless MOVE command is being executed from
within a batch script.

---

See the following transcript for an example where it initially shows the qq1 and qq2 directories as having three and no files respectively. Then, we do the move and we find that the three files have been moved from qq1 to qq2 as expected.

C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents>dir qq1
 Volume in drive C is Primary
 Volume Serial Number is 04F7-0E7B

 Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq1

20/01/2011  11:36 AM    <DIR>          .
20/01/2011  11:36 AM    <DIR>          ..
20/01/2011  11:36 AM                13 xx1
20/01/2011  11:36 AM                13 xx2
20/01/2011  11:36 AM                13 xx3
               3 File(s)             39 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  20,092,547,072 bytes free

C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents>dir qq2
 Volume in drive C is Primary
 Volume Serial Number is 04F7-0E7B

 Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq2

20/01/2011  11:36 AM    <DIR>          .
20/01/2011  11:36 AM    <DIR>          ..
               0 File(s)              0 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  20,092,547,072 bytes free

C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents>move qq1\* qq2
C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq1\xx1
C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq1\xx2
C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq1\xx3

C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents>dir qq1
 Volume in drive C is Primary
 Volume Serial Number is 04F7-0E7B

 Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq1

20/01/2011  11:37 AM    <DIR>          .
20/01/2011  11:37 AM    <DIR>          ..
               0 File(s)              0 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  20,092,547,072 bytes free

C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents>dir qq2
 Volume in drive C is Primary
 Volume Serial Number is 04F7-0E7B

 Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\Pax\My Documents\qq2

20/01/2011  11:37 AM    <DIR>          .
20/01/2011  11:37 AM    <DIR>          ..
20/01/2011  11:36 AM                13 xx1
20/01/2011  11:36 AM                13 xx2
20/01/2011  11:36 AM                13 xx3
               3 File(s)             39 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  20,092,547,072 bytes free

Answer 2

move c:\sourcefolder c:\targetfolder

will work, but you will end up with a structure like this:

c:\targetfolder\sourcefolder\[all the subfolders & files]

If you want to move just the contents of one folder to another, then this should do it:

SET src_folder=c:\srcfold
SET tar_folder=c:\tarfold

for /f %%a IN ('dir "%src_folder%" /b') do move "%src_folder%\%%a" "%tar_folder%\"

pause

Answer 3

This command will move all the files in originalfolder to destinationfolder.

MOVE c:\originalfolder\* c:\destinationfolder

(However it wont move any sub-folders to the new location.)

To lookup the instructions for the MOVE command type this in a windows command prompt:

MOVE /?

Answer 4

Lookup move /? on Windows and man mv on Unix systems

Answer 5

robocopy seems to be the most versatile. See it's other options in the help

robocopy /?
robocopy SRC DST /E /MOV

Answer 6

You can use the command move

move <source directory> <destination directory>

Reference

Answer 7

使用move然后move <file or folder> <destination directory>

Answer 8

Be sure to use quotes if there are spaces in the file path:

move "C:\Users\MyName\My Old Folder\*" "C:\Users\MyName\My New Folder"

That will move the contents of C:\\Users\\MyName\\My Old Folder\\ to C:\\Users\\MyName\\My New Folder

Answer 9

OMG I Got A Quick File Move Command form CMD

1)Command will move All Files and Sub Folders into another location in 1 second .

check command

C:\user>move "your source path " "your destination path" 

Hint : For move all Files and Sub folders

C:\user>move "f:\wamp\www" "f:\wapm_3.2\www\old Projects"

check image

you can see that it's before i try some other code that was not working due to more than 1 files and folder was there. when i try to execute code that is under line by red color then all folder move in 1 second.

now check this image. here Total 6.7GB data moved in 1 second ... you can check date of post and move as well as Folder name.

i will soon make a windows app that will do same..

Answer 10

To move subdirectories, including empty folders, you can use a combination of copy and remove:

# Setting up test env...
C:\> mkdir folder1 folder1\sub1 folder1\sub2 folder2
C:\> touch folder1\sub1\file.txt

# Copy "folder1" to "folder2", then remove "folder1"
C:\> xcopy /e folder1 folder2
C:\> rmdir /s /q folder1