Deleting files that are greater than 30 days old

In looking for a way to delete files that are older than 30 days, I came across ForFiles.exe:


ForFiles is useful for a couple of reasons:
1. It replaces the FOR command in the command shell, which is extremely powerful and useful, but a bit of a pain.
2. It allows you to use relative time (in days) to select the files that you want to act upon

Because links often break, I've included the content here. This is a microsoft TechNet article.


Link to article:

Forfiles

Updated: January 21, 2005

Related Links • Command-line reference A-Z • Command shell overview • Dir

Forfiles

Selects files in a folder or tree for batch processing.

Syntax

forfiles [/p Path] [/m SearchMask] [/s] [/c Command] [/d[{+ | -}] [{MM/DD/YYYY | DD}]]

Parameters

/p Path

Specifies the Path on which you want to start searching. The default folder is the current working directory, which you specify by typing a period (.).

/m SearchMask

Searches files according to SearchMask. The default SearchMask is *.*.

/s

Instructs forfiles to search in subdirectories.

/c Command

Runs the specified Command on each file. You must wrap command strings with spaces in quotation marks. The default Command is "cmd /c echo @file".

/d[{+ | -}] [{MM/DD/YYYY | DD}]

Selects files with a date greater than or equal to (+) or less than or equal to (-) the specified date, where MM/DD/YYYY is the specified date and DD is the current date minus DD days. If you do not specify + or -, + is used. The valid range for DD is 0 - 32768.

/?

Displays help at the command prompt.

Remarks

•	Forfiles is most commonly used in batch files.
•	Forfiles /s is similar to dir /s.
•	The following table list the variables that you can use in the /cCommand command string. Variable Description @file File name @fname File name without extension @ext File extension @path Full path of the file @relpath Relative path of the file @isdir Evaluates to TRUE if a file type is a directory, otherwise it evaluates to FALSE @fsize File size in bytes @fdate Last modified date stamp on the file @ftime Last modified time stamp on the file
•	With forfiles, you can run a command on or pass arguments to multiple files. For example, you could run the TYPE command on all files in a tree with the *.txt extension. Or, you could execute every batch file (*.bat) on the C:\ drive with the file name "Myinput.txt" as the first argument.
•	With forfiles, you can do any of the following: • Select files by an absolute or a relative date using /d. • Build an archive tree of files using variables such as @fsize (file size) and @fdate (file date). • Differentiate files from directories using the @isdir variable. • Format output by including special characters in the command line and surrounding the characters with the hexadecimal code 0xHH.
•	Forfiles works by implementing the recurse subdirectories flag on tools designed to process only a single file.

Examples

To list all of the batch files on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.bat /c"cmd /c echo @file is a batch file"

To list all of the directories on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.* /c"cmd /c if @isdir==true echo @file is a directory"

To list all of the files older than 100 days on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.* /dt-100 /c"cmd /c echo @file : date >= 100 days"

To list all of the files older than January 1, 1993 on drive C:, and then display "file is quite old!" for files with a date older than 01/01/1993, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.* /dt-01011993 /c"cmd /c echo @file is quite old!"

To list all of the extensions of all of files on drive C: in column format, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.* /c "cmd /c echo extension of @file is 0x09@ext0x09" With:

To list all of the batch files on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m *.bat /c "cmd /c echo @file is a batch file"

To list all of the directories on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m *.* /c "cmd /c if @isdir==true echo @file is a directory"

To list all of the files older than 100 days on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m *.* /d t-100 /c "cmd /c echo @file : date >= 100 days"

To list all of the files older than January 1, 1993 on drive C:, and then display "file is quite old!" for files with a date older than 01/01/1993, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m *.* /d t-01011993 /c "cmd /c echo @file is quite old!"

To list all of the extensions of all of files on drive C: in column format, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.* /c "cmd /c echo extension of @file is 0x09@ext0x09"

Top of page

Formatting legend

Format	Meaning
Italic	Information that the user must supply
Bold	Elements that the user must type exactly as shown
Ellipsis (...)	Parameter that can be repeated several times in a command line
Between brackets ([])	Optional items
Between braces ({}); choices separated by pipe (|). Example: {even|odd}	Set of choices from which the user must choose only one
Courier font	Code or program output