Windows – Using xcopy to copy multiple files/directories, some of which have spaces

cmdwindowsxcopy

I'm trying to use xcopy to copy over several files and directories onto an external hard drive. The following command works fine…

xcopy d:\location\folder /e

… except it's not copying over any files/directories withing d:/location/folder that have spaces. I understand that Windows requires file names with spaces need to be enclosed in quotes, but what do I do if I'm trying to do a huge recursive copy where there may be several files or folders with spaces in the name?

Best Answer

Use quotes:

xcopy "d:\location\folder" /e

Related Solutions

Windows – batch file Copy files with certain extensions from multiple directories into one directory

In a batch file solution

for /R c:\source %%f in (*.xml) do copy %%f x:\destination\

The code works as such;

for each file for in directory c:\source and subdirectories /R that match pattern (\*.xml) put the file name in variable %%f, then for each file do copy file copy %%f to destination x:\\destination\\

Just tested it here on my Windows XP computer and it worked like a treat for me. But I typed it into command prompt so I used the single %f variable name version, as described in the linked question above.

Windows – Why does xcopy not copy files when using these parameters

xcopy will also report 0 File(s) copied if you use forward slashes "/" in paths instead of backslashes "\", though ONLY if you've enclosed the path in quotes.

This fails with "0 File(s) copied"
```
xcopy "pathname1/file" pathname2\file
```
This fails with "Invalid number of parameters"
```
xcopy pathname1/file pathname2\file
```
This works just fine
```
xcopy pathname1\file pathname2\file
```

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – batch file Copy files with certain extensions from multiple directories into one directory

Windows – Why does xcopy not copy files when using these parameters

Related Topic