Creating subfolders with PowerShell in multiple parent folders

Question

I am looking to create sub-folders within several different parent folders on a Network share. I have about 900 or so customer folders that I want to add a sub-folder to. I have the clients listed in an excel spreadsheet, which is not a CSV, is there an easy way to create these sub-folders?

New-Item -ItemType directory -Path "P:\Customer Folders\Customers A thru D\

I am using the above as directory creation but I don't want to have to use this command 900+ times. -recurse doesn't seem to do it as it gives me an error.

Any help would be appreciated.

Have you considered ForEach($Folder in (Get-ChildItem 'P:\Customer Folders' -Directory)){New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $Folder.FullName+"\Folder to create"}? Or maybe saving your excel sheet as a CSV and going from there? — TheMadTechnician
– TheMadTechnician, Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 18:50
The excel sheet isn't formatted properly for that, it won't import the data properly. With the .FullName+ would that allow me to just run it and it would create the folder in all subfolders? How would I input the client names? I am still a little green with PowerShell. Could I create it in one spot then use a -recurse to copy the empty folder to each one after that? — Fridflenstone
– Fridflenstone, Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 18:53
Without having a better idea of your directory structure it is hard to answer those questions. My suggested code would created a folder named 'Folder to create' inside every subfolder of 'P:\Customer Folders'. So for example: 'P:\Customer Folders\Microsoft\Folder to create', 'P:\Customer Folders\Starbucks\Folder to create', 'P:\Customer Folders\Boeing\Folder to create' — TheMadTechnician
– TheMadTechnician, Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 19:03
To give you a better idea, the structure is P:\Customer Folders\Customers A thru D\"Customer Name"\HelpDesk. I am trying to create a HelpDesk sub-folder for each customer folder. I tried to use the one you supplied above on a small test structure and I am getting an error - + CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [New-Item], ParameterBindingException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PositionalParameterNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.NewItemCommand — Fridflenstone
– Fridflenstone, Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 19:10

TheMadTechnician · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-22 19:58:25Z

4

Ok, I forgot parenthesis when I gave the code in my comment. Here's what should work for you:

foreach($folder in (gci 'P:\customers a thru d' -directory)){
    new-item -ItemType directory -Path ($folder.fullname+"\Helpdesk")
}

I created the following to test with:

C:\Temp\customers a thru d\Microsoft
C:\Temp\customers a thru d\Starbucks
C:\Temp\customers a thru d\boeing

I ran the code above (with path modified as appropriate), and it created the folders as expected. If you want to suppress the output you can pipe that to |Out-Null, but that's up to you.

answered Sep 22, 2014 at 19:58

TheMadTechnician

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1 Comment

Fridflenstone Over a year ago

Dude, you just made my day. Thank you so much, it works like a charm. I marked it as an answer sadly I don't have the reputation to upvote other wise I would.

jabs · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-14 16:13:03Z

0

The directory parameter for the Get-ChildItem needs Powershell version 3.0. I got the following to work with v1.

Get-ChildItem -path C:\Test | #replace C:\Test with your structure
Where-Object { $_.PSIsContainer } |
ForEach-Object {
    #Write-host $_.FullName
    new-item ($_.FullName+"\Folder Name Here") -type directory  
}

answered Oct 14, 2016 at 16:13

jabs

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