Consolidating several files in folders to one folder?

March 24, 2006 9:57 AM

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?

posted by jasmeet to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Best answer: 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...
posted by delmoi at 10:02 AM on March 24, 2006

could you just search for your movie files, cut them and paste them to the new folder?
posted by psychobum at 10:05 AM on March 24, 2006

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.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:39 AM on March 24, 2006

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.
posted by alms at 11:08 AM on March 24, 2006

Response by poster: 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.
posted by jasmeet at 11:33 AM on March 24, 2006

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.
posted by joeblough at 3:26 PM on March 24, 2006

Response by poster: joeblough: yup, thanks. =)
posted by jasmeet at 8:04 PM on March 24, 2006