{"id":7371,"date":"2015-03-10T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-10T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2015\/03\/10\/use-powershell-to-zip-multiple-folders\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T10:30:20","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T17:30:20","slug":"use-powershell-to-zip-multiple-folders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/use-powershell-to-zip-multiple-folders\/","title":{"rendered":"Use PowerShell to Zip Multiple Folders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/b>: Use Windows PowerShell to create a .zip archive of multiple folders.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Hey, Hey, Scripting Guy! I need to compress multiple folders before I attempt to archive them. I would like to do this without having to install additional software. Can you help?<\/p>\n

—DR<\/p>\n

\"Hey, Hello DR,<\/p>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. This afternoon I am sipping a red berry tea and munching on a chocolate biscotti. Maybe it is not too exciting, but it is relaxing. I am looking over my email sent to scripter@microsoft.com<\/a> on my Surface 3 Pro, and things are good.<\/p>\n

One of the cool things about the free update to Windows 8.1 from Windows 8 is that in addition to including Windows PowerShell 4.0, it includes .NET Framework 4.5, which is way cool. The thing I love the best is the improved compression classes. It makes working with .zip files a piece of cake.<\/p>\n

I have a folder on my laptop that I use for backing up files, creating archives, and stuff like that. So, I do not need to check to see if a folder exists or worry about overwriting such a folder. Here is the path assignment in my script:<\/p>\n

$path = "C:\\backup"<\/p>\n

I use the Get-ChildItem<\/b> cmdlet to find all of the folders I want to archive. In this example, I want to archive all of my FSO* types of folders. I test my command before I add it to my script. This is the command and its output:<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> Get-ChildItem -Path c:\\ -Filter "fso?" -Directory<\/p>\n

    Directory: C:\\<\/p>\n

Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name                                      <\/p>\n

—-                ————-     —— —-                                      <\/p>\n

d—-          3\/4\/2015   9:47 AM            fso                                        <\/p>\n

d—-          3\/9\/2015   3:28 PM            fso1                                      <\/p>\n

d—-          3\/9\/2015   3:28 PM            fso2                                      <\/p>\n

d—-          3\/9\/2015   3:28 PM            fso3       <\/p>\n

The cool thing is that in the Windows PowerShell ISE, I can highlight only the portion of the command I want to use, and that is what runs. So my actual command will be:<\/p>\n

$source = Get-ChildItem -Path c:\\ -Filter "fso?" -Directory<\/p>\n

I know that this returns a DirectoryInfo<\/b> object, and that I need to access specific properties to get to the individual folder paths—but I will do that later.<\/p>\n

I need to add the assembly that contains the compress classes, so I do this here:<\/p>\n

Add-Type -assembly "system.io.compression.filesystem"<\/p>\n

I now need to create the destination path for each archive I will create. I do this inside a loop that walks through my collection of DirectoryInfo<\/b> objects. This script is shown here:<\/p>\n

Foreach ($s in $source)<\/p>\n

 {<\/p>\n

  $destination = Join-path -path $path -ChildPath "$($s.name).zip"<\/p>\n

I keep only one archive of a folder in my Backup folder at a time, so if the archive exists, I want to delete it. Here is the script that accomplishes that task:<\/p>\n

If(Test-path $destination) {Remove-item $destination}<\/p>\n

Now it is the simple task of creating the archive. Here is the command:<\/p>\n

[io.compression.zipfile]::CreateFromDirectory($s.fullname, $destination)<\/p>\n

The complete script is shown here:<\/p>\n

$path = "C:\\backup"<\/p>\n

$source = Get-ChildItem -Path c:\\ -Filter "fso?" -Directory<\/p>\n

Add-Type -assembly "system.io.compression.filesystem"<\/p>\n

Foreach ($s in $source)<\/p>\n

 {<\/p>\n

  $destination = Join-path -path $path -ChildPath "$($s.name).zip"<\/p>\n

  If(Test-path $destination) {Remove-item $destination}<\/p>\n

  [io.compression.zipfile]::CreateFromDirectory($s.fullname, $destination)}<\/p>\n

I check to see if the archives exist. As shown in the following image, they do:<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

DR, that is all there is to using Windows PowerShell to create a .zip archive of multiple folders. Zip Week will continue tomorrow when I will talk about more cool stuff.<\/p>\n

I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Use Windows PowerShell to create a .zip archive of multiple folders.  Hey, Scripting Guy! I need to compress multiple folders before I attempt to archive them. I would like to do this without having to install additional software. Can you help? —DR  Hello DR, Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. This afternoon I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[567,3,12,45],"class_list":["post-7371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-files-and-folders","tag-scripting-guy","tag-storage","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: Use Windows PowerShell to create a .zip archive of multiple folders.  Hey, Scripting Guy! I need to compress multiple folders before I attempt to archive them. I would like to do this without having to install additional software. Can you help? —DR  Hello DR, Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. This afternoon I […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}