Hello, In plain english what I want to do is the following. Check in c:\folder1\ for the existance of files file1.exe file2.dll file3.pdf if they don't exist then I want to copy them from C:\sourcefolder I can do this is line by line with IF NOT EXIST C:\FOLDER1\FILE1.exe XCOPY ..... is there a way to do this with a for loop with just one line of code? Thank you.

you can use labels & GOTO in batch programming :Start IF NOT EXIST C:\FOLDER1\FILE1.exe XCOPY IF NOT EXIST C:\FOLDER1\FILE2.pdf XCOPY IF NOT EXIST C:\FOLDER1\picture.PING XCOPY GOTO Start you have a loop now with, not sure on how you can get it with single line only

for %%f in (file1 file2 file3 file4) do if not exist c:\folder1\%%f xcopy c:\sourcefolder\%%f c:\folder1

Awsome Klint! that did it. THANKS!!!

can you please explain "for" command, I just can't understand it.

The for command is one of the most powerful features of Windows batch language. To learn the full set of features can get a little complicated, but if you want to know, just type FOR /? at the command prompt. To start off, the following does thingss with a number of named files (assuming you have a program called do_things_with.exe): for %%f in (file1 file2 *.txt *.bat) do ( echo Doing things with file %%f... do_things_with %%f ) Note that the double %% sign is needed inside a batch file, but use only a single % if you are typing the above directly at the keyboard. A more advanced example: counting, using the for /L switch: for /l %%i in (0 10 100) do echo %%i The above prints the numbers 0, 10, 20,...100.