Batch Delete Files on server

[RichTea88]

Good Afternoon all,

I'm trying to delete a whole bunch of files on a server. I'm new to writing .bat files and I'm not entirely sure what to do. I have a long list of files and currently I just used excel to add 'del' in from of the path and '/f' at the end then saved it in a .bat file from notepad. It worked fine on my desktop for the tests I ran but doesn't work on the server locations.

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del \\ServerName\BigFolder\OtherFolders\Folder\subfolder\file.txt /f
del \\ServerName\BigFolder\OtherFolders\Folder\subfolder\test.txt /f

I tried mapping the location of the files to a network drive and changed the code to the below but again no result.

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del Z:\Folder\subfolder\file.txt /f
del Z:\Folder\subfolder\test.txt /f

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards in advance!

Cheers,

R

[foxidrive]

then saved it in a .bat file from notepad. It worked fine on my desktop for the tests I ran but doesn't work on the server locations.

Did you see any error messages on the console? What did you see?

[RichTea88]

then saved it in a .bat file from notepad. It worked fine on my desktop for the tests I ran but doesn't work on the server locations.

Did you see any error messages on the console? What did you see?

Nothing, I mean the console popped up and did something really quickly then disappeared but I don;t know how to get the window to stay open long enough for me to see what it says

[ShadowThief]

You may want to

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pushd \\ServerName\BigFolder\OtherFolders\Folder\subfolder\

and then you can just

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del /f file.txt
del /f test.txt
etc.

and finish your script with

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popd

.

[foxidrive]

I mean the console popped up and did something really quickly then disappeared

Put pause as the last line in your script, or
open a cmd prompt and launch your batch file that way.

[RichTea88]

Awesome, just added the pause and ran it. I think I know what the problem is. I'm accessing the files through a remote desktop, the error reads

"C:\Users\MyName\Desktop>del Z:\Folder\subfolder\file.txt /f
The system cannot find the file specified"

If I use pushd to a certain folder level is it almost the same as creating a network drive to that folder and popd removes it once complete?

I ask because not all of the files are in the same folder, they're all over the place. So I'd use pushd to the most common folder then specify the file path from there?

[RichTea88]

Okay,

I tried using pushd to the most common folder, didn't work. However it does work it right to the folder the files sit in.
What I'll do is create a spreadsheet with all the file paths and seperate the file names from their path.
Then

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pushd folderpath
del file1.txt
del file2.txt
popd
pushd nextfolderpath
del file1.txt
del file2.txt
popd

[ShadowThief]

If I use pushd to a certain folder level is it almost the same as creating a network drive to that folder and popd removes it once complete?

Yes, that's exactly what that does. It also moves you into that directory once the network drive is created. You don't have any say in what letter the network drive is assigned to, so you can't use full paths, but if you pushd \\server\directory\other_directory and your files are located in \\server\directory\other_directory\third_directory\file.txt, you can simply del .\third_directory\file.txt to delete them.