Im looking for a way to move all files in a top level folder and all of its subfolders into a new separate top level folder on the volume I specify.
This is known as a “recursive” folder scan and there are numerous articles on the web about how to do recursive scans using terminal and other various programming languages but I’d like to find a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for MAC OS
I need this to organize files (mostly photo/image type files) from many folders into a single location of my choosing. I have over 500,000 such files in multiple locations and I want to consolidate them in fewer folders all in one location
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Stephen
It doesn't sound like you need anything that complex to achieve your goal. If I understand you correctly, you have folder A. Inside folder A you have other folders, like B, C, D and E. Maybe inside some of those you have others, like folders F, G, H, I and so on. In all of those folders you have various files. You want to move all the files to a new folder, Z, so that folder Z is just all the files, not the folders.
So here's what you do. In the Finder, go to folder A. Then Command+F to start a search. Make the search something that would encompass all files. Like they all have .jpg in the name, or they all have creation dates after Jan 1, 1970. At the top make sure it has the search area set to folder A, not "This Mac." So now you should see a list of all the files in there.
Now open a second Finder window, and go to folder Z. Then just drag the search results from the one Finder window into folder Z in the second Finder window.
This is terrific. Just what I needed. Much appreciated.
I use Terminal with the “find” command to do a recursive search.
If you are unfamiliar with Terminal, get the ebook titled Take Control of the Mac Command Line with Terminal. You can get the ebook from TakeControl.com. In Terminal, most commands have a complete manual page with examples.
# man find
Or get a simplified example with: # find -h