PowerShell Scripting Question

David Baker 0

Hi I'm new to PowerShell and have a PowerShell scripting question. I have files I'm copying to a new destination what I would like to do is extract year from the file creation date and create a folder with the year as the name.
I can achieve this with a batch script but would like to move to use PowerShell.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Dave

Mike Rodrick

@David-Baker-0 ,

Here is something I was using to move pictures and videos to directories based on the date taken. (iPhone, why would you import everything into one big directory?!)

You will need to modify it to fit your needs. If I can find some time this afternoon, I will modify this script to work with the file creation date. But this will give you a starting point.

# $file = Get-Item IMG_0010.jpg
$files = Get-ChildItem -Filter *.mov
foreach ($file in $files){
$shellObject = New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application
$directoryObject = $shellObject.NameSpace( $file.Directory.FullName )
$fileObject = $directoryObject.ParseName( $file.Name )

$property = 'Date taken'
for(
  $index = 5;
  $directoryObject.GetDetailsOf( $directoryObject.Items, $index ) -ne $property;
  ++$index ) { }

$dateTimeTaken = $directoryObject.GetDetailsOf( $fileObject, $index )
$dateTimeTaken
$dateTaken = $dateTimeTaken.split(' ')[0]
$monthTaken = $dateTaken.split('/')[0]
$dayTaken = $dateTaken.split('/')[1]
$yearTaken = $dateTaken.split('/')[2]
if ($monthTaken.Length -lt 3){
    $monthTaken = '0'+$monthTaken
}
if ($dayTaken.Length -lt 3){
    $dayTaken = '0'+$dayTaken
}
$newDir = '20'+$yearTaken+'-'+$monthTaken+'-'+$dayTaken
$rootPath = "c:\users\miker\pictures\mel videos\"
$newPath = "c:\users\miker\pictures\mel videos\" + $newDir

if (-not (Test-Path $newPath)){
    New-Item -Path $newPath -ItemType Directory
    Move-Item -Path $file.FullName -Destination $newPath
} else {
    Move-Item -Path $file.FullName -Destination $newPath
}
}

Mike Rodrick

@David-Baker-0 ,

The script I posted earlier was a little complex, because it was dealing with EXIF data of image files.

Since you are working with file metadata, the file object has that information readily available. One thing to consider with the file creation date in Windows, is this date can change. Seems odd, but true. The file creation date in Windows is based on when the file object was created. So if you copy a file, to Windows this will change the file creation date, since technically, the copy is a new object, just created. This is why you can have a last modified date earlier than the file creation date.

So the date you really want to use is the last modified date, or as PowerShell refers to it, the LastWriteTime. This isn't perfect, because it is updated when the file changes, but usually aligns better with when the file was created than the CreationTime property.

If you know the files are the originals, you could use the CreationTime property instead of the LastWriteTime. I would suggest trying it an see if you get the expected results. In the following script, simply replace LastWriteTime with CreationTime and see what happens. You could also change Move-Item to Copy-Item while testing, so you can repeat the test.

I've added some comments to the script to explain what each step is doing.

 # Get a list of files to move
$files = Get-ChildItem -Path "D:\test" -Recurse

# Loop through the list of files
foreach ($file in $files) {

    # Get the year the file was last modified
    $yearCreated = ($file).LastWriteTime.Year

    # Set the destination path
    $rootPath = "D:\Archive\"

    # Create a path based on the year
    $yearDir = $rootpath + $yearCreated

    # Check if the year directory already exists
    If (-not(Test-Path $yearDir)){

        # Create the year directory if it doesn't exist
        New-Item -Path $yearDir -ItemType Directory
    }

    # Move the file to the year directory
    Move-Item -Path $file.FullName -Destination $yearDir
}

PS Markdown doesn't do a good job rendering PowerShell, the last part of the script looks like one big comment. Once you copy and paste into PowerShell ISE or VSCode, it should be ok.