Sérgio’s blog

Let’s assume the following scenario: you have an hierarchy of 30 folders with 3 levels. On those folders you have documents, text files, zip files, pdf files and audio and picture files all mixed up.

You want for example to easily select all document files and move them to a document dedicated folder. Traversing all hierarchy and moving files manually is time consuming.

You can efficiently do this by using the search functionality on Windows Explorer.

Using Windows Explorer go to the parent folder of the directory structure you want to clean up. Click Search on your toolbar.

The Search Companion column will show up at your left: “What do you want to search for?”.

You can try and play with the search options but for this example let’s say you select All files and folders.

You want to search for documents so let’s enter .doc at the box All or part of the file name and confirm that the Look in drop down box has our parent folder. It’s confirmed so let’s hit the Search button.

All your document files will show up as result of your search. Now you can manipulate them as you usually do on Windows Explorer disregarding they are on different folders.

So we can hit CTRL+A to select them all and then drag them to a target folder making sure SHIFT is pressed while dragging (to move the files instead of copying them) – or using CTRL+C at the selected list and then CTRL+V at the target folder – or using right-click cut at the selected list and right-click paste at the target folder. Use the method you are most used to.

And this should be enough to move all documents stored across folders to one target folder, easily.

You can use the same technique to delete files with certain patterns for example. Just remember that the same operation you can do on files at the same folder you can do to any group of files across your file system in one go.

Have fun!