How to move files with a specific file extension from within a parent folder as well as its' subfolders to a new folder

Question

I want to move all files with extensions such as: .JPEG .MP3 .MP4 .MOV .AVI .PDF .PSD .WAV .TXT

...to new parent folders named after the extension of the files contained therein. Currently I have too many files within so many subfolders (under one parent folder) to do this manually. I tried searching the parent folder with * to then sort by file type but it is too much and my system either freezes or is unusable/slow. please assume I know nothing in regard to scripts/batch files but I can follow directions, copy and paste ;) please advise.

Answer 1

(After edit and comments) This script should do it, including subfolders:

@echo off
for \r %%f in (*) do (
    if not exist %%~xf mkdir %%~xf
    move /y %%f %%~xf\%%~nf.%%~xf
)
pause

If you've never used a Batch script before, here's how it works:

1. Open Notepad (not MS Word or WordPad)
2. Copy/paste the script in it
3. File -> Save As
4. In the "Type" dropdown menu, select "All types"
5. Save the file as something.bat (you can change the something but the .bat needs to be there)
6. Put the file in the same directory as the files it needs to work on
7. Double click the file

Make sure you test it before actually using it. The pause at the end in not needed, it will just prompt you to press a key before closing the window.

Answer 2

Ok, I fixed my code. You need to do two things. First, you should have a "directory_of_Files" which contains all of the files and subfolders with files. Next you should have a new parent folder, "new_parent_directory", which is empty. new_parent_directory will get organized by the file endings from the files within "directory_of_Files". Essentially, this script looks for all of the files within a directory, and directories within that directory, then, it creates a list of the file endings and then it makes directories in a new directory based on those file endings, and then it takes all the files within the parent directory and moves them into the newly established directories.

If you have python installed.....

In terminal, type

python

then,

import os

then,

#this is ths directory that contains all your files 
#YOU MUST CHANGE THIS!!!!!!
directory_of_Files = "/Users/name/Desktop/test1"

#AND YOU MUST CHANGE THIS!!!!!!
new_parent_directory = "/Users/name/Desktop/newhometest"

#From here down, it's all magic. 
all_subfolders = [x[0] for x in os.walk(directory_of_Files)]

#Get the full file name and only the files
filenames=[]
for subfolder in all_subfolders:
    os.chdir(subfolder)
    for file in filter(os.path.isfile, os.listdir(os.getcwd())):
        if not file.startswith("."):
            filenames.append(os.getcwd()+"/"+file)

#get the file endings
all_files_endings = []
for i in filenames:
    all_files_endings.append(i.split(".",1)[1])

#remove the duplications
all_files_endings = list(set(all_files_endings))

#create some folders in the new_directory with the file endings
for fileExtensions in all_files_endings:
    os.mkdir(new_parent_directory + "/" + fileExtensions)    

#move the files from their old destination to their new destination 
newnames=[]
for subfolder in all_subfolders:
    os.chdir(subfolder)
    for file in filter(os.path.isfile, os.listdir(os.getcwd())):
        if not file.startswith("."):
            newnames.append(new_parent_directory+"/"+file.split(".",1)[1]+"/"+file)
            print file 
if len(filenames) == len(newnames):
    for i in range(len(filenames)):
        shutil.move(filenames[i], newnames[i])

I tested this on Mac OSX 10.11 with python 2.7. You could also just copy all of the code into a text file, save it as "something.py", and then run it from terminal with the code,

python something.py