Question

How do I move all of the sub-folders within a master folder, but NOT the master folder itself.

The source path is c:\book\music\

I don’t want to move the master folder itself because I’m getting an I/O Device error.

What code can I use to do this? Kindly, please spell code out because I am a baby with the command-line 🙂

Answer 1

Here is a longish script, but it should work pretty well.
It uses “dir”, but you might look at “forfiles” as well.
Forfiles is more flexible, but really it is difficult to use.

@echo off
@rem USAGE: MoveDirs From To

setlocal

    set from="%~1"
    set to="%~2"

    if "%1"=="" goto :Usage
    if "%2"=="" goto :Usage


    for /f "delims=;" %%a in ('dir "%1" /ad /b ') do call :MoveIt "%1" "%2" "%%a"

    goto :EOF

:MoveIt
    move "%~1\%~3" "%~2" > nul || echo Failed to move %3 to %2 & goto :EOF
    echo Moved %3 to %2
    goto :EOF

:Usage
    echo Usage: moveDirs.bat  FromDirectory ToDirectory
    goto :EOF