[SOLVED] Fild all xls files in subdirectories and move them to a folder based on file creation date

Fild all xls files in subdirectories and move them to a folder based on file creation date

I have a folder that contains subfolders each with many excel spreadsheet. I am trying to get powershell to search through the subdirectories then move all the xls file with the same creation date into a new folder of that creation date. I am close I think here is my code. What is happening is that it only looks at file in "reporting" and not the subfolders of "reporting".

Get-ChildItem "c:\users\username\documents\reporting\*.xls" -Recurse | foreach {
$x = $_.LastWriteTime.ToShortDateString()
$new_folder_name = Get-Date $x -Format yyyy.MM.dd
$des_path = "c:\users\username\documents\$new_folder_name"

if (test-path $des_path){
   move-item $_.fullname $des_path
   } else {
   new-item -ItemType directory -Path $des_path
   move-item $_.fullname $des_path
   }
}

Solution

There is no need to first use ToShortDateString() on the LastWriteTime property and then use that to recreate the date in order to format it.

Because you are using the -Recurse switch to search subfolders aswell, the code can be adjusted to also the -Include parameter like:

$sourcePath = 'c:\users\username\documents\reporting'
$targetPath = 'c:\users\username\documents'
Get-ChildItem $sourcePath -Include '*.xls', '*.xlsx' -File -Recurse | ForEach-Object {
    $des_path = Join-Path -Path $targetPath -ChildPath ('{0:yyyy.MM.dd}' -f $_.LastWriteTime)
    if (!(Test-Path -Path $des_path -PathType Container)) {
        # if the destination folder does not exist, create it
        $null = New-Item -Path $des_path -ItemType Directory
    }
    $_ | Move-Item -Destination $des_path -Force -WhatIf
}

The -WhatIf switch at the end of the Move-Item is for testing. Once you are satisfied with the text shown in the consoe, remove that switch to actually start moving the files.