How to use the Copy-Item cmdlet correctly to copy piped files

Question

I am building a small script which should copy all .zip files to a special folder called F:\tempzip.

I tried it with Copy-Item cmdlet, but I didn't manage to do it. The script should copy all files from this folder (recursively) which are ".zip".

This is the part of the script I am talking about:

get-childitem F:\Work\xxx\xxx\xxx -recurse `
   | where {$_.extension -eq ".zip"}       `
   | copy-item F:\tempzip

What do I have to add?

Adi Inbar · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-31 15:28:49Z

13

It's a lot simpler than that. Copy-Item has its own -Recurse switch. All you have to do is:

Copy-Item F:\Work\xxx\xxx\xxx\*.zip F:\tempzip -Recurse

edited Jul 31, 2013 at 15:28

answered Jul 31, 2013 at 14:51

Adi Inbar

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3 Comments

Richard Over a year ago

Yes it does have a built in recures switch but you need to activate it using the -recurse parameter. Also trying to filter at the folder path doesn’t work very well with copy-item you are better of using the -filter param. So it would look something like this Copy-Item F:\Work\xxx\xxx\xxx\ F:\tempzip -Recurse -filter *.zip But this will copy the folder and its subfolders not just the .zip files into the destination folder

Adi Inbar Over a year ago

How sloppy - the whole point of my answer is that Copy-Item has its own -Recurse switch, but I left out the -Recurse switch. :) I fixed the answer.

Richard Over a year ago

Makes a little more sense now :)

Richard · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-15 10:30:44Z

11

When piping items to copy-item you need to tell it that "F:\tempzip" is the destination path.

| Copy-Item -Destination F:\tempzip

You can also cutout piping to the where operator by using Get-ChildItem's parameter -filter.

Get-Childitem "C:\imscript" -recurse -filter "*.zip" | Copy-Item -Destination "F:\tempzip"

Edit: Removal of unnecessary foreach loop and updated explanation.

edited Jul 15, 2016 at 10:30

answered Jul 31, 2013 at 14:37

Richard

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3 Comments

David Martin Over a year ago

I believe that adding a filter to the get-childitem commandlet is more efficient than filtering the results: Get-ChildItem -Filter *.zip -Recurse

RayofCommand Over a year ago

i can't use filter, because it's just a part of my script. i copy many zip files which are created in different subfolders. so i need a recursive search. with your fullpath it worked :) thank you. with filter it didnt work. so i still have my recursive search

Joey Over a year ago

Copy-Item should be smart enough to handle a FileInfo object, actually, so you wouldn't need the .FullName there.

Greg · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-01 04:12:15Z

5

For whatever reason, the Copy-Item recursion didn't accomplish what I wanted, as mentioned here, and how it is documented to work. If you have a bunch of *.zip or *.jpg files in arbitrarily deep subfolder hierarchies, and you want to copy them to a single place (one flat folder, elsewhere), I had better luck with a piped command involving Get-ChildItem. Say you are currently in the folder containing the root of your search:

Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Include *.zip | Copy-Item -Destination C:\Someplace\Else

That command will copy all the files and not duplicate the folder hierarchies.

edited Jul 1, 2015 at 4:12

answered Jun 30, 2015 at 19:52

Greg

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1 Comment

furier Over a year ago

This is what I needed, copy all files of a type recursively to a flat structure.

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