Robocopy: copying files without their directory structure

Question

I have a network fileshare called \\SMWEB\MSDS which contains hundreds of sub-directories named MSDSnnnn (i.e., MSDS plus a number).  Inside each sub-directory MAY be numerous files — some .html, .jpg and various .pdf files.  There may also be a sub-directory called _vti_cnf, which contains old FrontPage extensions associated with meta-data.  But there should always be at least one file within these sub-directories with the name format MSDS#.PDF.  (The number may be varying lengths; e.g., MSDS99.PDF or MSDS1099.PDF, etc.)

There may also be old, outdated versions of these files which the owner appended an X#_ in front of the file (see the red box in the image — there are two archival versions of the MSDS0001.PDF file in this example).

This is what the tree structure looks like:
        

Here's what I need to accomplish: I need to copy all of the current, top-level PDF files somewhere (a single directory called SDS on my H:\ drive).  I do NOT want to replicate the sub-folders, and I only want the files with the MSDS*.PDF pattern.  (These files are highlighted in yellow in the above image.)  So I want to exclude:

• files in sub-directories under MSDSnnnn directories (e.g., in _vti_cnf sub-directories),
• files whose names don't begin with MSDS (e.g., the X#_ files), and
• files whose names don't end with .PDF (e.g., HTML and JPEG files).

I tired the following command in Robocopy:

robocopy \\smweb\msds\ H:\SDS msds*.pdf /S /R:3 /W:3 /NDL /XJD /XD _vti_cnf

The problem is that Robocopy replicated the folder structure on my H: drive.

How can I accomplish my goal?

Solution 1

In the end, I took a two step approach.

First I ran the Robocopy command which copied all of the files and the tree structure to a temp directory called SDS1, but it excluded the "_vti_cnf" sub-folders with the extraneous meta-data:

robocopy \\smweb\msds\ \\smf4\HOME\gpence-home\SDS1 msds*.pdf /S /R:3 /W:3 /NDL /XJD /XD _vti_cnf

Then I ran a PowerShell script which removed the sub-folders in the tree by copying the files to another directory called SDS2. (The -WhatIf parameter shows you the results without actually executing the command. Simply remove that parameter when you are ready to execute the command "for real".)

get-ChildItem -Path "\\smf4\HOME\gpence-home\SDS1\msds*.pdf" -Recurse | Copy-Item -Destination "\\smf4\HOME\gpence-home\SDS2" -WhatIf

That worked well for me.

Solution 2

Have you considered using a different file copy tool? Robocopy does not support this out of the box. Here is a link that discusses that exact topic:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8690245/robocopy-copy-folders-content-to-a-single-folder

You can also try something simple like this

for /r \\SMWEB\MSDS %f in (MSDS*.pdf) do @copy "%f" H:\MSDS

Comments

[Scott - Слава Україні]

(1) Your image doesn’t match your text — the image shows an archived version of MSDS0002.PDF under the MSDS0001 directory. (2) What should be done with file(s) in the _vti_cnf directories?

[gpence]

@Scott -- you are correct -- the archived version labeled X2_MSDS0002.PDF should have read X2_MSDS0001.PDF. The files in the _vti_cnf folders can be ignored because they are old Frontpage Extensions associated with meta-data. The files have the same name as the parent folder, but the data inside is different and should not be copied for my purposes.