How can Powershell copy an entire folder structure but exclude one folder and its contents

Question

This seems like a simple operation but I can't figure out how to get Powershell to copy an entire folder structure from one location to another but exclude one folder (called 'connections') and its contents.

I've tried combining Copy-Item and Get-ChildItem like so

cpi (gci folder1 -Exclude connections) folder2  -recurse

but it seems the -recurse parameter overwrites the -exclude parameter and the connections folder and its contents are copied. Without -recurse the contents of the folders I do want copied are ignored.

AHowgego AHowgego · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-13T11:24:36

I'm not sure why that isn't working, it seems to behave correctly on my machine.

You could always pipe to Copy-Item:

Get-ChildItem folder1 | where { !(($_ -is [System.IO.DirectoryInfo]) -and ($_.Name -eq "connections")) } | Copy-Item -Destination folder2 -Recurse

The advantage of this is that you can just get PowerShell to print out the output after:

Get-ChildItem folder1 | where { !(($_ -is [System.IO.DirectoryInfo]) -and ($_.Name -eq "connections")) }

That way you can check exactly what is getting copied (i.e. is the "connections" folder missing?)

How can Powershell copy an entire folder structure but exclude one folder and its contents

1 Answers