File Exporer Context Menu: Empty Folder

[Cheese-Echidna]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

It would be an option in the file explorer context menu when you right-click on a folder, it would be called "empty folder to current directory" or similar and there would be a second option called "empty folder to current directory recurcivley". The first option would take all the files out of the folder that is being right-clicked on and move them into the directory being viewed, i.e. into the same directory as the folder that was storing them moments ago. The "recursively" option would continue doing this for every subdirectory until what was left was only files and not folders. Ideally, you would be able to select multiple folders at once and do it to all of them.

Scenario when this would be used?

This would be really helpful, as there is currently no way I know of to speed up this process when you have to go into many folders and empty out their contents.

Supporting information

No response

[sredna]

How often do you actually do this?

The first one is just Enter, Ctrl+A, Ctrl+X, Backspace, Ctrl+V. The recursive operation can be manually performed by using any file search tool and just Ctrl+A and then dragging and dropping the files into the desired directory.

You could write a simple PowerShell script or something else that does this. As a suboptimal PoC you can use this .reg file:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Directory\Shell\SillyEmpty\command]
@="cmd /c (for %%A in (\"%1\\*\") do @move /-Y \"%%~fA\" \"%1\\..\\\")&(for /D %%A in (\"%1\\*\") do @move /-Y \"%%~fA\" \"%1\\..\\\")&cd..&rd \"%1\""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Directory\Shell\SillyRecursiveEmpty\command]
@="cmd /c (for /R \"%1\" %%A in (*) do @move /-Y \"%%~fA\" \"%1\\..\\\")&(for /R \"%1\" %%A in (.) do @rd \"%%~fA\" 2>nul)&cd..&rd \"%1\""

[Jay-o-Way]

@sredna I believe it's not really about moving everything one level up, but more to dissolve the folders and place all files in the root folder. That is a duplicate of #9269

Thanks for the reg/cmd code though 🙂

[sredna]

I believe it's not really about moving everything one level up, but more to dissolve the folders and place all files in the root folder.

That 2nd reg code does move all files to the root (by root, I mean the parent of the folder you right-clicked on). It might have some issues deleting some of the leftover empty directories but solving that in one line without any kind of force switch was more than the 5 minutes I was willing to spend on this.

[Cheese-Echidna]

@sredna I believe it's not really about moving everything one level up, but more to dissolve the folders and place all files in the root folder. That is a duplicate of #9269

Thanks for the reg/cmd code though 🙂

Thanks for finding (and linking) that one, I'm definitely going to use it. I still think a feature like this could be useful as a power toys option.

[franky920920]

Duplicate of #9269

[franky920920]

Issue is a duplicate

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