Selecting files in Windows Explorer using db data?

[caboverpete]

I have a db that contains a field with files names and what I want to do is use this field to select the files from a directory using Explorer. Anyone know if this is possible?

Problem is I have a directory with 1500 files and I need to pick out about 400 random files from it, the file names are in a db so I thought if I could just use that to do the selection it would make my life that much easier.

[binary visions]

Hmm... Do you need them selected or would it be okay to move them to a new (temporary) directory?

Here's what I would do. It's ugly and inefficient but it would work and wouldn't cause you a lot of hassle.

Export the list of files out of the database. Then, you want to add "move" before the file name and "<directory>" after the file name - there are several ways to do this. If you can export a piece of consistant data before and after the file name in the export file, you can do a search and replace - for instance, if this was music, perhaps your database contains "file type" and "bitrate" fields so each line item of your export field would read, "MP3, <file name>, 128kbps" and you could do search and replace to substitute "MP3," with "move" and ", 128kbps" with " <directory>".

If you can't do that, you could do a mail merge within Word. Just export your file names, set up a page full of mailing letters (they need to be ONE ACROSS in the column, otherwise it'll screw up your copy/paste), and merge your data in between "move" and "<directory>". Then copy and paste into a text document.

Any way you do it, you'll end up with a big page of "move <file> <directory>". Just save that as a .bat file in the directory with all of your files in it, and run it. Everything will be moved to a new temp directory.

I'm sure there's a more elegant solution but that's the first way I thought of. If you want a more specific instruction about setting up a mail merge, it's pretty easy and I can walk you through it with no trouble.

[caboverpete]

Hey thanks for the reply. Moving them is exactly what I need to do, right before I checked your reply I started creating a batch file. I dont do much with batch files and it just took a while for it to click. Luckily my GIS software will make it easy to tack the batch commands onto the data in each field with VB script.

[binary visions]

Excellent :thumb:

Wasn't sure what DB software you were using - some software makes customizing exports very easy, some software is stubborn and only lets you do defaults.

Gotta love batch files! I know there's a way to read in lines from a seperate file using BASIC commands, but it's been too long since I've used BASIC and researching the solution would take longer than creating an ugly batch file.