Windows Tip: Simulate "No to All" in file copy dialog

by Brad Linder Apr 11th 2008

When you try to copy a group of files from one folder to another, Windows will bring up a handy little window if it notices files in the target directory with the same name as files from the source directory. You can manually choose which files to overwrite or leave be one by one. Or you can click "Yes to All" to effectively overwrite every file with a duplicate name in the target directory.

But what if you want to click "No to All?" There's no button for you, but that doesn't mean Windows won't let you skip all the duplicate files. All you have to do is hold down the Shift key and click No. Now Windows will skip all files with duplicate names and copy the rest of your files to the new directory, thus saving you a lot of time, heartache, and repetitive finger motions.

[via Online Tech Tips and Tech Xpress]

Tags: confirm-file-replace, copy, no-to-all, yes-to-all

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

soniiic said 5:33PM on 4-11-2008

Thank you! this has been a certain annoyance of mine and i'm glad to have finally found an answer!

roycifer said 5:47PM on 4-11-2008

nice! but i wish i had this tip 8 years ago.

Zelidar said 11:18AM on 4-15-2008

Same here. Better not try counting the hours I have lost all these years doing those painful manual resyncs.

I'd be better off waiting for downloadsquad coming online on a Mac or Linux box before beginning to use Windows :-).

All this frustration...

BuntyAurBabli said 8:45PM on 4-11-2008

Bow to you :)

I am in the process of backing up from multiple computers to an external hard drive and it was annoying to say no everytime.

This is the most helpful tip I have received in recent times.

Thanks.

Desi_D said 12:09AM on 5-04-2008

Is this Bunty/Babli I know? From Singriwala?

Rick Blaiklock said 8:46PM on 4-11-2008

Check out Teracopy - http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php

edward said 7:41AM on 4-12-2008

SWEET!!! This is almost as good as finding out about ctrl+direction for text editing.

Gustavo Leig said 7:47AM on 4-12-2008

Oh MAN, this is OLD NEWS! I know this since Windows 98!!!

hahahha

but usefull

Maxxum is a spammer said 7:23PM on 4-12-2008

Well, You should have let us know 10 years ago.

JV said 7:23PM on 4-12-2008

Useful tip, thanks!

cloud9ine said 7:24PM on 4-12-2008

what roycifer said!

Veeraraghavan said 7:24PM on 4-12-2008

Great tip....lookin for dis for a long time....thanks a lot...

Bull3t said 7:25PM on 4-12-2008

Why the hell didn't they add the button that says: "No to All" instead of leaving us to find out on our own that we have to hold shift and click no. I mean, it makes it look bad if nothing else... Damn, you can see why people hate Microsoft, they leave out things like this and expect you to find it, or search the internet for it. Nice one.

ModusOperandi said 7:26PM on 4-12-2008

Um, they did add it:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/1079/movefilesg4.png

keeves said 4:54PM on 4-13-2008

go Vista! it's teaks like that why i wouldn't want to go back to XP

Diabolic Preacher said 7:26PM on 4-12-2008

a much smarter option these days is to use sync software like grsync, toucan or synctoy (besides other paid options). they let you spend only that much time and disk reads and writes required to copy over only the changed files. i feel this is great advantage for short lifespan devices like thumb drives.

i use toucan on windows and grsync on linux. you would still need the above tip if you were doing a cut n paste, but from experience its been found to be more reliable to copy and then delete the source if you no longer need it.

Michael Graham said 7:26PM on 4-12-2008

Downloaded and installed and like the program. Now is there a program around that lets you organize you context menus?

DrBen said 7:41PM on 4-12-2008

maybe they should just have the button there ?!

Bryce said 1:02AM on 4-13-2008

I haven't used Windows lately, but IIRC it works for "Yes" as well.

Its a good tip for those who don't know, but one of those "Duh" things for those who do, haha.

Jeff Goebel said 8:23AM on 4-14-2008

HOLY WOW BATMAN!

People ask me all the time, what do I think about Vista. My honest answer is that the ONLY thing that Vista does better than Windows XP is that it has a NO TO ALL on the file copy. If I had read this last year, I could have saved myself a lot of upgrade frustrations.

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