PowerShell: Move all files from same type in subfolders, to subsubfolders

May 27, 2022

I try to move all files of extension .wav from 400 different folders inside a certain root folder, to their subfolders called ‘Stems’. Meaning that each of those 400 folders inside the root folder have a subfolder called ‘Stems’.

$Dir = 'F:\PRODUCTION\Complete Projects\*'

Get-ChildItem -Path $Dir -File -Filter '*.wav' |
  ForEach-Object {
      $Dest = "$($_.DirectoryName)\*\Stems"
      If (!(Test-Path -LiteralPath $Dest))
      {New-Item -Path $Dest -ItemType 'Directory' -Force}

      Move-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination $Dest
  }

When I select for variable $dir a specified project folder and remove the * from the $dest$ variable, as shown below, it does move the .wav files correctly to the ‘Stems’ subfolder.

$Dir = 'F:\PRODUCTION\Complete Projects\Project 392 - Woodland\'

Get-ChildItem -Path $Dir -File -Filter '*.wav' |
  ForEach-Object {
      $Dest = "$($_.DirectoryName)\*\Stems"
      If (!(Test-Path -LiteralPath $Dest))
      {New-Item -Path $Dest -ItemType 'Directory' -Force}

      Move-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination $Dest
  }

However, I would like to be able to do this at once for different folder names, instead of 400 times per specified folder.

Any suggestions?

>Solution :

If I understood correctly, you could add a -Recurse switch to Get-ChildItem to get all .wav files and them group them by their parent’s folder path, the iterate for each group of objects and move them to their respective sub-folder:

# get all wav files recursive
Get-ChildItem -Path $Dir -File -Filter '*.wav' -Recurse |
    # group them by their parent folder absolute path
    Group-Object { $_.Directory.FullName } | ForEach-Object {
        # for each group, create a destination folder
        $dest = New-Item (Join-Path $_.Name -ChildPath 'Stems') -ItemType Directory -Force
        # and move them
        $_.Group | Move-Item -Destination $dest -WhatIf
    }

You can remove the -WhatIf switch once you consider the script is doing what you want.