Copying files

[PT]

Hoping someone can answer this - or direct me to the right group.

In Win XP Pro - copying folders full of folders and files - lots of them -
when the system comes to a file it does not want to copy for whatever
reason. An error comes up in a window to tell you about it and when you
click on OK that is it. The copying process stops and if you want to skip
that file and then to go on with the rest of the copying it is necessary to
delete the problem file and start over, or do the rest of the job folder by
folder.

Hope that is clear.

My question - Does anyone know how to make the system skip the problem file
and continue?

I wonder why including a "Skip file" command in the process has not occurred
to the great MS.

Thank you.
Paul

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hoping someone can answer this - or direct me to the right group.

In Win XP Pro - copying folders full of folders and files - lots of them -
when the system comes to a file it does not want to copy for whatever
reason. An error comes up in a window to tell you about it and when you
click on OK that is it. The copying process stops and if you want to skip
that file and then to go on with the rest of the copying it is necessary to
delete the problem file and start over, or do the rest of the job folder by
folder.

Hope that is clear.

My question - Does anyone know how to make the system skip the problem file
and continue?

I wonder why including a "Skip file" command in the process has not occurred
to the great MS.

Thank you.
Paul

The "skip file" facility has occurred to the great MS, plus a large number
of other things, but only in a Command Prompt environment (which is
where System Administrators dwell). In other words, you need to write
a batch file that does exactly what you want. Here is an example:

1 @echo off
2 echo Copying files from "%UserProfile%\Desktop\My Music" to "D:\Some
Folder".
3 echo.
4 xcopy /s /d /y /c "%UserProfile%\Desktop\My Music" "D:\Some Folder"
5 pause

The line numbers are for visibility only. Remove them!

Here is what the switches mean:
/s: Copy the current folder plus all subfolders.
/d: Copy only if the source file is newer than the target file.
/y: Overwrite the target file without prompting if it exists.
/c: Continue copying even if an error occurs.

These are only a small fraction of all the switches you can use.
The command xcopy /? shows you the lot. It is obviously
impractical to include all of them in a GUI.

 

[Kelly]

Great question! Hope someone that really knows jumps in. Good luck in the
meantime!

--

All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP)

Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com

In memory of those lost during Katrina &
Prayers and Hope for the remaining displaced.

 

[PT]

Thank you - takes me back to the days of MS-DOS and the C: prompt (or even
the Arompt), almost all of which I have forgotten.

BTW, I went back to the problem file that interrupted my copying session and
looked carefully at the filename. There are a number of spaces in the name
but one space was occupied by a black bar. I copied the filename (just the
name, not the file) into Word and all was revealed. There was an em dash in
the filename. Apparently that was why the file would not copy to another
computer or open on another computer on the network. I got rid of the em
dash and all is well.

I seem to recall that Windows used to bring up a list of forbidden
characters if you tried to use one in a filename.
Thanks again,
Paul

 

[Trax]

|>I seem to recall that Windows used to bring up a list of forbidden
|>characters if you tried to use one in a filename.

Try to rename any file \
and you will get the forbidden list

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

AFAIK, every operating system relies on an underlying set
of typed commands. They have not disappeared in Windows
but Microsoft followed the lead set by Apple and wrapped
many of them into a soft GUI. So if you go back to writing
batch files then it's a question of surviving without the
comfortable GUI that you are now so used to.