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Simple tip: Flatten a Folder Structure Easily

I was recently looking into re-organizing a collection of files I had. They were broken into a lot of sub-folders that I didn’t really need. The files were automatically split up and given a file path with attributes from the CD when they were ripped.

The folder structure looked like this:

I was looking at moving all of the MP3 files up at least three folders. Given the number of directories, I didn’t want to do it manually.

I used the programmer ReNamer to easily change the files, in batches, to unique names.

The trick to get all the files moved to one directory is just simply doing a search with wildcards. Since I want to move all .mp3 files, I just do a search in the top-directory I want for’ *.mp3′.

Once the search results come up, I see all the .mp3 files listed from all the sub-folders. I just simply cut and paste that list of files from the results and into the folder that I want them to be. After the sub-folders are empty, I just delete them and have the exact folder structure I wanted.

I was hoping I’d be able to script something to work with ‘copy *.mp3 C:title’ or something of that nature, but I can’t complain with the above steps. Of course, I wouldn’t have need to do this if I was using Media Monkey on this computer and its auto-organize function.