Each January, we have to create to a new accounting folder structure. It’s great to have each year have the same structure as the previous one for quick switching between year’s data. This is a tedious task to accomplish manually, but is very quick to do with Window’s command line and the built in xcopy program.

If you are a client of ours, where we perform at least monthly accounting, we will do this for you. If we have not, you can do it yourself, but please make sure it has not already been done!

1. Make Sure that the parent folder exists in the Destination Directory, ie “2014”.

2. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the folder(Source Directory) that contains the structure that you want to copy, select the path, and copy it.

3. Go to the Start button, type cmd and click on cmd.exe.

4. When the black Command Prompt window shows, type: XCOPY “

5. Click on the little black icon in the upper left hand corner, select Edit > Paste. The source directory should paste in.

4. Enter one double quote (“) and a space, then one more double quote (“).

5. Back in Windows Explorer, locate the destination directory, select the path, and copy it.

6. In the Command Prompt window, Click on the little black icon in the upper left hand corner, select Edit > Paste. The destination directory should paste in.

7. Enter Enter one double quote (“).

8. Add a space and then /T /E

8. The Command Prompt should show XCOPY “SourceDirectoryPath” “DestinationDirectoryPath” /T /E

5. Press Enter.

6. Your original folder structure should now be copied (without files) into the destination directory.