Question

I am trying to write a Powershell script that will automate the deletion process of certain files. These files are older than 6 months old, and need to be deleted.

If my $Path = "C:\Users\username\Documents\Test\", what would be the Powershell script to DELETE every file and directory older than 6 months old in the 'Test' directory.

I am new to Powershell, please explain the parts of the script as well.

Answer 1

Get-ChildItem –Path "C:/Users/username/Documents/Test/" -Recurse | Where-Object {($_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-180))} | Remove-Item -Recurse -Force

Get-ChildItem –Path "C:/Users/username/Documents/Test/" -Recurse

Get-ChildItem - this commands gets all the sub directories and files

-Path option specifies the directory from where to start

-Recurse option allows to go to subdirectories and files

| "pipe" - the output from Get-ChildItem is passed to Where-Object

Where-Object {($_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-180))}

Where-Object - for each object

$_.LastWriteTime - get the last write time

-lt - less than

Get-Date - get the current days

AddDays - add the specified number of days

for each directories/file from the Get-ChildItem check the lastwriteTime it's older than 180 days/6 months

| "pipe" - pass the output from Where-Object to Remove-Item

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force

Remove-Item - removes an item(file/folder)

-Recurse - Tranverse to sub folders

-Force - forcefully