Script to copy a subset of files to a new drive/directory

Cornucopia

KingL wrote: »

that's the ticket - works perfectly, thanks a lot

Happy to help - I always enjoy getting the tech to save a bit of otherwise tedious manual effort. This technique of using a spreadsheet to create a BAT file is very powerful - you can even build in an element of intelligence with an IF formula, DATE/TIME etc.

If you needed something more elaborate in the future, I'd suggest looking at VBScript. This is a simple scripting language that runs natively on Windows (i.e. no app needs downloading to run it).

I have a VBScript that creates a disk-mirror between the drive of my laptop (where I do all my work) and the network-attached backup drive on my router. It took a little while to get it to work exactly as I wanted it to, but it now just sits there creating an on-going backup of my work with zero effort.

steviebuk

Cornucopia wrote: »

The easiest way (without coding) to do this kind of thing is to use Excel (or the excellent, free Google Spreadsheet) to create a batch file from your file list. You use formulas to create each line of the script from your list.

e.g.

Column A: holds your list
Column B: holds your destination folder for each entry (could be derived from [A] using a formula
Column C: holds a formula that takes [A] and and combines them into a copy command. There's a forum limitation on adding script elements to posts, so I've put an image of the example below.

Then copy Column C into a text file, add a ".BAT" suffix and double click it in File Manager.

WHAT! Is this some sort of wizardy!?!? I've been in IT for over 10 years and never knew you could do this in Excel


Nice.

Cornucopia

Excel - it's not just for Accountants.

that

have a fiddle with freefilesync think it does what you want and offers visual selection

A_Nice_Englishman

See also:


Robocopy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy and

RichCopy https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2009.04.utilityspotlight.aspx