Comments on: Consolidating several files in folders to one folder?

Question: Consolidating several files in folders to one folder?

jasmeet — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 09:57:44 -0800

How do I consolidate files in several folders into one folder?

I have several folders filled with several movie files. I'm trying to consolidate them all into one folder, without having to drag all the files out one by one. Is there an easy way to do this on a Mac via command line or something?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:02:55 -0800

well, if all your folders are in one folder called 'old-folders' you could do something like

cp old-folders/*/*.mov new-folder/

I think...

By: psychobum

psychobum — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:05:37 -0800

could you just search for your movie files, cut them and paste them to the new folder?

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:39:55 -0800

Just drag and drop the things into a new folder. It's at least as easy as dorking with the terminal...and you'll be sure to move just what you want.

By: alms

alms — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 11:08:56 -0800

Jasmeet, you don't have to drag files one at a time. You can select multiple files using the mouse, and you can select all of them by hitting command-A or choose "Select All" from the "Edit" menu. Then drag them to the new folder.

By: jasmeet

jasmeet — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 11:33:45 -0800

delmoi: That worked best. Thanks!

psychobum: that could've worked, but compared to delmoi's method, was a bit more work.

Thorzdad: I don't mind dorking in Terminal =) I was looking for a Terminal'ish solution, glad I didn't have to use a script too.

alms: I have several files, in several folders. I would've had to go into each folder, Cmd+A, copy into one folder, one by one. And there's over a 100 folders.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions. This is why I <3 Ask Metafilter.

By: joeblough

joeblough — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:26:06 -0800

if you used "cp" you actually copied the files, so the old copies are still around, unless you trashed the orginal folder...

you can use "mv" instead to move the files.

By: jasmeet

jasmeet — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 20:04:48 -0800

joeblough: yup, thanks. =)