Moving multiple files via command line to one folder/directory (Windows 7)

Question

C:\Users\Moondra>move "WebScraping with Python projects.ipynb", Untitled2.ipynb "Scraping projects"

I'm trying to move the first two files ("WebScraping with Python projects.ipynb", Untitled2.ipynb) to the folder "Scraping projects". I can move one file to the folder at a time, but I can't seem to move both via one command.

I keep getting The syntax of the command is incorrect. even if I remove the comma in between the two files.

Answer 1

I can move one file to the folder at a time, but I can't seem to move both

I keep getting The syntax of the command is incorrect. even if I remove the comma in between the two files.

The source must be a single file, a directory, or a wildcard expression. None of these apply in your case, where you are specifying two files.

The syntax of the move command is:

Syntax

MOVE [options] [Source] [Target]

Key

source : The path and filename of the file(s) to move.

target : The path and filename to move file(s) to.

options:
    /Y    Suppress confirmation prompt, when overwriting files.
    /-Y   Enable confirmation prompt, when overwriting files.

Both Source and Target can be either a folder or a single file.

The source can include wildcards (but not the destination).

Source move

Assuming that your source directory contains only the 2 ipynb listed in the question you can use the following command:

move *.ipynb "Scraping projects"

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Further Reading

• An A-Z Index of the Windows CMD command line
• move - Move a file from one folder to another.
• wildcards

Answer 2

The MOVE /? text is wrong, or misleading, both in English and German, as of Windows 10 21H2 (10.0.19044.2846). You can only move multiple files by wildcard.

Many people will have Git for Windows or Cygwin installed, and they can make the UNIX mv.exe command available (beware of its pitfalls, though: it overwrites without confirmation) by placing a one-line script called mv.bat in the PATH:

@"C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\%~n0.exe" %*

The %0 is the name the script was called with, and %~n0 is the name only without the path and the extension. You can then hardlink other names to that script, and it will call executables in that same folder:

mklink /h diff.bat mv.bat
mklink /h perl.bat mv.bat

Or use a FOR loop and a TXT file containing only the command names to link your two or three dozen in one go:

for /f %A in (git-usr-bin-useful.txt) do @echo %A

Replace echo with the suitable mklink command in the for loop.