Question

I have a batch file that is searching for PST files,creating a .txt file with the location of the searched files, then creating a folder in the Documents dir.
What I want to do is to copy the PST files to the new dir in the Documents dir.
Problem is I cant get the PST’s to copy to the new dir??
Any idea what am I doing wrong ?

The .bat look like this;

dir C:\*.pst /s /b > %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\pstFileLocation.txt
md %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Refresh_PST
for /F "tokens=3" %%v in ('pstFileLocation.txt') do copy "%i" "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Refresh_PST"

Answer 1

The problem is how you are reading the text file. You are using tokens=3 which means you are trying to read the 3rd item in each line (by default items are separated by a space) and there is most likely not a 3rd item if they are just file paths.

You are also trying to copy the variable %i which doesn’t exist.

You can fix the the token issue using tokens=* to read the whole line as one item, but it would be easier and quicker to just do this

md "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Refresh_PST"
for /r C:\ %%a in (*.pst) do copy "%%a" "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Refresh_PST"

Which saves the need for exporting the files to a list and then reading them back.