What are you trying to do? Organizing your tax receipts or clearing out your downloads? Why not learn these easy techniques so that you can automatically move your files from one folder to another to save you time?
Moving files automatically from one folder to another can be done pretty easily on your Windows computer.
This quick guide covers the step-by-step processes that’ll help you automate your file transfer tasks on Windows computers only!
Why Move Files From One Folder to Another Automatically?
There are extensive reasons why you would want to set up this system of file transfer.
The reason might be that your Downloads folder does get clustered just within days. In a scenario like this, you can easily set up a task that will automatically move your files to folders selected by you. This keeps the Downloads folder clean and uncluttered.
Moreso, another reason could be that you have a folder where you store files, but you probably do not utilize those files once you’re done working on them. You could easily set up a command that automatically moves files from that folder into an archive folder on your computer instead.
Automatically Move Files From One Folder to Another on Windows
On computers with Windows OS, you can easily and automatically move files from the selected source folder into the folder of your target. The script can check the age of your files to make sure that all your files are only moved after a period of days or months have passed since they were created.
If you’ve never written a batch script in your life, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. In fact, in order to accomplish making a script for the task, what you need to do is copy the code which will be given below and paste it, specify your folders, and that’s all.
Here’s what you’ve got to do.
Step 1. Write the Script to Automatically Move Files
The very first thing to do is the script writing, and specify some values in it.
- Open the Start menu, search for Notepad, and open it.
- Paste the following script into a new Notepad document.
@echo off
set X=Days
set “source=SourceFolder”
set “destination=DestinationFolder”
robocopy “%source%” “%destination%” /mov /minage:%X%
exit /b
3. In the above-written script, all you have to do now is to replace Days with the actual number of days after which the script should automatically move your files (this is actually the age of your files), replace also SourceFolder with the path to where your files are located, and lastly replace DestinationFolder with the path to where you wish your files to be moved to.
4. Click the File menu and select Save As.
5. Select All Files from the Save as type dropdown menu, enter a name for your file, append .bat at the end in the File name field, and click Save to save the file.
Your batch script is now ready! Quite easy right???
Step 2. Schedule the Batch Script to Run Automatically
Double-clicking on the just-created batch document will move all your files from one folder to another. In order to finalize everything by automating the task, all you need to do is to put this file into an automated task.
Task Scheduler is just good enough to assist you in that aspect. You can easily create a task in the app, and ask it to run your script based on the schedule which you choosed.
Here’s the process involved in setting up your task in Task Scheduler.
- First thing to do is to Open the Start menu, and simply search for Task Scheduler, and launch it.
- Click on Create Task at the right region in order to configure an automatic task.
- Enter a name for your task in the Name field.
- Click the Triggers tab at the top, after that, click New to add up a new trigger.
- On the trigger screen, select how often your batch script should run from the Settings section. You can then specify the time for when the script should launch on the right pane. Then, click OK at the bottom.
- Select the Actions tab and click New to add a new action.
- Make sure Start a program is selected in the Action dropdown menu. Then, click the Browse button.
- Navigate to where you’ve saved your batch script and select it.
- Click OK and then OK again to save your task.
Task Scheduler at the specified time and frequency will then run your batch script. When this happens, the script will automatically move your files from the source folder over to your destination folder.
If you get tired of this system and ever wish to disable the automatic movement of your files, all you have to do is open your Task Scheduler, find your task in the list, click Delete on the right. Doing that will prevent the batch script from automatically running, thereby hindering the automatic movement of your files. Simple!!!
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