Move contents of folder up one level

Question

I'm trying to move all files that are in a level-three sub-directory structure up one level.

A:\mozartBilder\Box 03 - Divertimenti, Serenades\CD02\img\folder.jpg

I basically want to get rid of the img sub-directory, but keep its contents one level above.

These are of my 180 cd collection of Mozart's Works. There are 180 cds, 17 Box Sets, each box containing ~11 cds. Each picture was placed in this exact structure:

A:\mozartBilder\Box*number1-17\CD*1-11\img\folder.jpg

What I want to achive is that the folder.jpg gets moved up one directory.

So to go from

A:\mozartBilder\Box 03 - Divertimenti, Serenades\CD02\img\folder.jpg

to

A:\mozartBilder\Box 03 - Divertimenti, Serenades\CD02\folder.jpg

I've searched on SuperUser and found people with similar questions, however none of the provided solutions worked for me.

For this code:

A:\mozartBilder>for /r %i in ("img\folder.jpg") do move %i %~pi..

I get this error:

A:\mozartBilder>move A:\mozartBilder\Box 02 - Serenades, Dances, Marches\CD03\"img\folder.jpg" \mozartBilder\Box 02 - Serenades, Dances, Marches\CD03\"img\.. The syntax of the command is incorrect.

Answer 1

To move folder.jpg up one level but keep the \img folder:

gci A:\mozartBilder folder.jpg -recurse |
   move-item -Destination {$_.Directory.Parent.FullName}

To move the file up one level & delete the \img folder (assuming it's empty):

gci A:\mozartBilder folder.jpg -recurse |
   move-item -Destination {$_.Directory.Parent.FullName}
gci A:\mozartBilder -recurse |
   ?{$_.PSChildName -match 'img'} | remove-item

Trying to combine move-item & remove-item in a single foreach-object resulted in error messages even though the file was moved & directory deleted, so I went with the above approach.

Answer 2

A nice, easy, way with GUI.

Download Double Commander; it's a twin pane file manager which is free, even for commercial use, and cross platform. You may soon find that you never visit the command line again.

The twin panes are great for move/copy/archive/unarchive/compare operations, not to mention FTP, file/directory compare, multi-file/directory rename, file search by name/contents (with wildcards/regex), etc.

You have two options here:

• Navigate to A:\mozartBilder\Box 03 - Divertimenti, Serenades\CD02\img\ in the left pane and A:\mozartBilder\Box 03 - Divertimenti, Serenades\CD02\ in the right pane
  • select all files in the source directory by using the keypad plus key, or by hitting Ctrl-A
  • press F6 to move all files and enter to select the destination

OR

• Navigate to A:\mozartBilder\Box 03 - Divertimenti, Serenades\CD02\img\ in the left pane
  • select all files in the source directory by using the keypad plus key, or by hitting Ctrl-A
  • press F6 to move all files and type .. (parent directory) for the destination.

Quod erat demonstrandum :-)

Since no answer is complete without an image ...

Please let us know how it works out (and take a good look at all of DC's features; I only scratched the surface above)