SQL DBA Blog

Tag: PowerShell Delete Files

  • How to Delete Files in PowerShell

    How to Delete Files in PowerShell

    This is a post on how to delete files in PowerShell, which will be useful when you need to delete files as part of a script in Windows.

    This post covers the following:
    # PowerShell: Delete a File
    # PowerShell: Delete a Folder
    # PowerShell: Delete Files in Subfolders Recursively

    I have a similar post on How to Create Files & Folders in PowerShell if of interest, and more random tips can be found in the PowerShell Tips Tag.

    PowerShell: Delete a File

    Remove-Item is the cmdlet to remove a directory or file in PowerShell. We can delete files within the current directory, or add the path parameter.

    I’m showing some syntax variations below. If you are passing a directory with spaces in the name then you will have to add quotes to the path.

    # Delete file in current directory
Remove-Item -Name testFile.txt

# Delete file in specified directory
rm -Path C:\temp\demoFolder\testFile.txt

# Delete all files in specified directory with .tmp file extension
rm "C:\temp\*.tmp"
    Remove-Item PowerShell

    PowerShell: Delete a Folder

    We do not need to change any parameters to delete a file, just run the same command as above. The consideration when deleting folders is the files within them.

    The following demo script first deletes a folder within the current directory, and the second part checks if folders exist before deleting them.

    # Delete a folder in current directory
rm .\demoFolder\

# Delete folder if exists, force delete all files in folder
# Does not delete files in sub-directories
$path = "c:\temp\demoFolder"
If((Test-Path $path) ){
    rm $path -Force -Recurse
}
    PowerShell Delete Folder If Exists

    PowerShell: Delete Files in Subfolders Recursively

    For when you need to delete files in a folder and subfolders, the script below should help. Amend path and file type wildcard as needed. 

    # Delete all .txt files in folder & subfolders
$path = "c:\temp\demoFolder"
If((Test-Path $path) ){
    Get-ChildItem $path -Include *.txt -Recurse | rm
}
    PowerShell Delete Files in Folder and Subfolders

    Last additional note on this, I haven’t used gci within any of the PowerShell scripts above in this post. It’s an Alias of Get-ChildItem.

  • Delete Files Older Than in PowerShell

    Here is an example of how to use PowerShell to delete files older than a specified date:

    # Set the path to the folder containing the files you want to delete
$folder = "C:\myfolder"

# Set the maximum age of the files in days
$maxAge = 30

# Get the current date and subtract the maximum age to get the cutoff date
$cutoffDate = (Get-Date).AddDays(-$maxAge)

# Get all the files in the folder that are older than the cutoff date
$files = Get-ChildItem $folder | Where-Object { $_.LastWriteTime -lt $cutoffDate }

# Delete the files
$files | Remove-Item

    This script will delete all files in the specified folder that have the last write time older than 30 days from the current date. You can adjust the $maxAge and $folder variables to customize the behaviour of the script.

    Note that this script does not move the deleted files to the recycle bin, so be careful when using it to avoid accidentally deleting important files. It’s always a good idea to test the script on a small, non-critical folder before running it on a larger folder or system.