How to Delete All Files Inside Folders Containing Specific Keywords Using PowerShell

Learn how to effectively remove all files within folders containing a specific keyword in PowerShell without deleting the folders themselves.
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How to Delete All Files Inside Folders Containing Specific Keywords Using PowerShell

If you've ever found yourself needing to clean up files in a specific set of folders on your computer, you may run into an issue. In particular, there may be times when you want to delete all files within folders that contain a certain keyword in their names, but you're unintentionally deleting the folders themselves. Fortunately, PowerShell offers a straightforward solution to this problem.

The Problem: Unintended Folder Deletion

Imagine you have multiple folders on your diskstation, and some of these folders are named with the keyword "rendery". When trying to delete all files inside these folders, you run a command that mistakenly deletes the folders as well. This can be frustrating and counterproductive, especially if you wanted to keep the folders themselves intact.

Here's the command you may have tried:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Why the Command Doesn’t Work as Intended

The issue with this command is that it targets the folders containing "rendery" and deletes them completely, along with their contents. This is not the desired outcome if you only wish to delete the files inside those specific folders.

The Solution: Adjusting the Command

To avoid deleting the folders and only remove the files inside them, we need to adjust our PowerShell command. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to do this:

Step 1: Identify the Target Folders

First, we want to look for the folders that match our criteria—in this case, containing the word "rendery".

Step 2: Fetch the Child Items

Instead of removing the folders directly, we should retrieve the child items of the specified folders. This means we'll access the files within the target folders instead of the folders themselves.

The Updated Command

Here’s the refined PowerShell command that achieves the desired outcome:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Explanation of the Command

Get-ChildItem C:\Test -Recurse: This part starts by getting all items within C:\Test directory and its subdirectories.

Where-Object {$.PSIsContainer -and $.Name -match "rendery"}: This filters the items to only include directories (folders) whose names contain "rendery".

Get-ChildItem: This command fetches all files inside the directories found in the previous step.

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force: Finally, this removes all the identified files within those folders.

Note on Code Simplification

It's worth mentioning that $_.PSIsContainer is already a boolean expression. Hence, it can be simplified by omitting the -eq $true, making the command cleaner.

Conclusion

By carefully structuring your PowerShell command, you can effectively delete all files within folders that contain a specific keyword without removing the folders themselves. No longer will you have to worry about unintentionally deleting the structures you want to maintain. Give the revised command a try and see how efficiently it handles your file management tasks in PowerShell!