CopyFolder Method

Microsoft Visual Basic Constants

CopyFolder Method

           

Description

Recursively copies a folder from one location to another.

Syntax

object.CopyFolder source, destination[, overwrite]

The CopyFolder method syntax has these parts:

Part Description
object Required. Always the name of a FileSystemObject.
source Required. Character string folder specification, which can include wildcard characters, for one or more folders to be copied.
destination Required. Character string destination where the folder and subfolders from source are to be copied. Wildcard characters are not allowed.
overwrite Optional. Boolean value that indicates if existing folders are to be overwritten. If True, files are overwritten; if False, they are not. The default is True.

Remarks

Wildcard characters can only be used in the last path component of the source argument. For example, you can use:

FileSystemObject.CopyFolder "c:\mydocuments\letters\*", "c:\tempfolder\"

But you can't use:

FileSystemObject.CopyFolder "c:\mydocuments\*\*", "c:\tempfolder\"

If source contains wildcard characters or destination ends with a path separator (\), it is assumed that destination is an existing folder in which to copy matching folders and subfolders. Otherwise, destination is assumed to be the name of a folder to create. In either case, four things can happen when an individual folder is copied.

  • If destination does not exist, the source folder and all its contents gets copied. This is the usual case.

  • If destination is an existing file, an error occurs.

  • If destination is a directory, an attempt is made to copy the folder and all its contents. If a file contained in source already exists in destination, an error occurs if overwrite is False. Otherwise, it will attempt to copy the file over the existing file.

  • If destination is a read-only directory, an error occurs if an attempt is made to copy an existing read-only file into that directory and overwrite is False.

An error also occurs if a source using wildcard characters doesn't match any folders.

The CopyFolder method stops on the first error it encounters. No attempt is made to roll back any changes made before an error occurs.