Trying to write a bat file to search all files in a directory for a certain string and copy the files that contain it to another directory. ...I've never written a bat file before. I've got the findstr command to list out the files but can't feed that list to the copy command. Can someone help?

This is my findstr command...I just can't redirect the output from the screen to another command. I can direct it to a txt file though.

findstr /M "<SRVC_INST_ID>23</SRVC_INST_ID>" c:\HawaiianTelecom\rl\*.*

If it's w2k and not DOS, this should help: ::== findcopy.bat @echo off for %%T in (c:\HawaiianTelecom\rl\*.*) do ( find "<SRVC_INST_ID>23</SRVC_INST_ID>" %%T > nul if errorlevel 1 goto :eof echo copy %%T d:\stuff ) :: DONE If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Thanks I'll give that a try.

This works up till it finds a file that fails then it stops without finishing the rest of the folder. Any Suggestions?

Hi, You're right. I was wrong. My apology for that. I think this will get it: ::== findcop2.bat @echo off for %%T in (c:\HawaiianTelecom\rl\*.*) do call :sub1 %%T goto :eof :sub1 find "<SRVC_INST_ID>23</SRVC_INST_ID>" %1 > nul if errorlevel 1 goto :eof echo copy %1 d:\stuff goto :eof :: DONE If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2