Tech Xpress

NO WAY!! And I thought I was a power user! How is this the first I've heard of this?!?

Wow, thanks for the awesome tip.

Anyone know why the hell they wouldn't just put in a "No to All" box?

Nice tip, thanks for sharing...

Why not just hit "Cancel"?

No to All would be too easy. Its a power user secret, sshhhh!

Anyhow, This is ridiculous. I have been a net admin for YEARS, YEARS I TELL YOU!!! This is the 1st time I've heard of this tip and it could have saved me about a billion mouse clicks. Man, how the heck did you figure this out!??!? You Rock! Thanks very much!

"ask me later" to all haha

because its microsoft ...
i think some windows like 3.1 or 95 had it

"ask me later" to all haha

Well, Microsoft knows a "No to All" button would just be confusing to new users. But holding shift while clicking No? Why that's just plain 'tuitive!

Just today I was hoping that there would be "No to all". Well, I ended up holding down the "N", as its the quick key for no.

"Anyone know why the hell they wouldn't just put in a "No to All" box?"

Too many buttons scare novice users.

@Anonymous
Because that wouldn't be opaque and unuseable enough for Microsoft.

Because it would look stupid with 5 buttons, they would have to make them radial button thingies.

Good man,
Kapil

Heh hold on, if you didnt want to copy ANY files you wouldnt start the operation in the first place. A No to all button would be redundant.

First of all, a BIG Thanks to all of you for reading and commenting on this article.

Some of you have pointed out "just hit Cancel" or "No to all is redundant".

Here's a scenario where this can be used.


1. Assume you have a folder named MYPIC which has 20 picture files (which may be good quality pics from your trip or whatever).

2. Your buddy gives you 50 picture files (no so good quality pics) of which 20 are already with you.

Remember you already have the good quality pictures...

3. You do a bulk copy from your friend's disc and paste it in your MYPIC folder.
A "No to All" here will transfer the other 30 files in your computer, thus avoiding the 20 low quality pics from overwriting the nice ones you have.

it doesnt work!

nittyc,

What is the OS version you are using?
You happen to be the first one who has mentioned this doesn't work.

WOOHOO

thanks matey

It doesn't work for me either (holding the SHIFT key). I'm using Windows XP Home. I ended up just holding down the "N" button. :(

Anon - That's quite strange! I tested this again and it worked in Windows XP Pro.
This should also work for Win XP Home, in fact any version of Windows. And the important thing is, this only works when the target location has more than one file with the same name.
So you can just verify it again with multiple files having the same name.

If you aren't scared of too many buttons, and would like to speed up copy/move operations,
try TeraCopy - I've reviewed it in my blog. [Read TeraCopy Review]

Someone told me about this a year or so ago and it worked for me. Now it isn't working (hence me googling for it again). I don't think I'd formatted since it was working. Maybe some sick, twisted windows update?

My problem is subdirectories. If I answer no to all subdirectories it will not look in them to see if files or more subdirectories are there or not it just skips the whole directory if it already exists. If I answer yes to all of them it also starts overwriting all files too. In essence the trick works great if your moving thousands of files from one directory to another but suppose you have a data directory and under it a dir for each year and under that a dir for each month and under that a dir for each day. In each day there are thousands of files. I need to ensure everything gets copied but given the size you can imagine it takes a long long time and the process can get stopped and I need to restart it.

Try Ycopy. Here's the blurb:"File copying tool is great for large scale copying and will skip files it can't handle without coming to a halt. You have to copy a few hundred gigs worth of files from one place to another. Because this will take a few hours, you decide to take a long lunch while the files migrate. Three hours and four Banana Margaritas later, you return to find the copy operation choked on the tenth file because the file was open on another screen, or had an error, or was read-only. All your computer has been doing while you were gone is display a message asking you what to do about it. This is when we know computers are not like people. Even the dumbest human would put aside copying that one file until you return. Yada yada yada".

Maybe this would be what your looking for?

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c26efa36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&DisplayLang=en

SyncToy v2.0