PowerShell: ErrorAction set to "SilentlyContinue" not working

Question

The following command does not show the error message, which is what I want:

Copy-Item "C:\Folder I Have Access To\*" "C:\Folder I Do Not Have Access To" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

The following command does show the error message, which is not what I want:

Copy-Item "C:\Folder I Have Access To\*" "C:\Folder I Do Not Have Access To" -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

This is because I'm using the "Force" parameter. Is there a way I can use the "Force" parameter and still not show the error message?

Solution 1

Add this first.

$ErrorActionPreference = "silentlycontinue"

Solution 2

Can you try this :

trap
{
  continue
}
Copy-Item "C:\Folder I Have Access To\*" "C:\Folder I Do Not Have Access To" -Force -errorAction SilentlyContinue

or

try
{
  Copy-Item "C:\Folder I Have Access To\*" "C:\Folder I Do Not Have Access To" -Force -errorAction SilentlyContinue
}
catch
{
}

Comments

[HouseCat]

This may need to be set in addition to a try catch due to objects (outside of your code) having exceptions being thrown back at your session. By setting the global preference, you also silence these errors being reported to screen.

[cjones26]

Excellent comment, @RagingCain!! This was driving me nuts.

[Hairy]

Worked well for me too, great stuff.

[JamesQMurphy]

Note that this sets the ErrorAction preference for all future calls as well. If you only want this set for one call (or a small handful of calls), then you need to set it back to whatever it was before.

[johny why]

@JamesQMurphy Just for that powershell session? Or all future sessions?

[JamesQMurphy]

@johnywhy Just for that session