How to copy multiple files/folders using single windows copy GUI in VB.Net

Question

I am making an app in VB.Net that copies many files and folders to the same directory and I wish to use windows explorer for that (so the user has GUI and I do not have to worry about showing any errors or compare files).

So, if I do this for each file/folder:

My.Computer.FileSystem.CopyDirectory(source_path, target_path, FileIO.UIOption.AllDialogs)
My.Computer.FileSystem.CopyFile(source_path, target_path, FileIO.UIOption.AllDialogs)

It works correctly and shows this window:

Which is fine, however, if I have many files and/or folders and I loop through them and call commands above, they launch a new copy window for each file/folder, instead of launching a single GUI that combines them all, like so:

Is it possible to combine multiple files/folders copy process into a single windows explorer copy window GUI?

Answer 1

Thanks to @Jimi, I got pointed in the direction of SHFileOperations, so i figured out how to do this. I made a small class to do this:

Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices

Public Class NativeCopy
    
    Private Enum FO_Func As Short
        FO_COPY   = &H2
        FO_DELETE = &H3
        FO_MOVE   = &H1
        FO_RENAME = &H4
    End Enum

    Private Structure SHFILEOPSTRUCT

        Public hwnd  As IntPtr
        Public wFunc As FO_Func

        <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)>
        Public pFrom As String

        <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)>
        Public pTo                   As String
        Public fFlags                As UShort
        Public fAnyOperationsAborted As Boolean
        Public hNameMappings         As IntPtr

        <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)>
        Public lpszProgressTitle As String

    End Structure

    <DllImport("shell32.dll", CharSet:=CharSet.Unicode)>
    Private Shared Function SHFileOperation(
       <[In]> ByRef lpFileOp As SHFILEOPSTRUCT) As Integer
    End Function

    Private Shared _ShFile As SHFILEOPSTRUCT

    Public Shared Sub Copy(ByVal sSource As List(Of String), ByVal sTarget As String)
        _ShFile.wFunc = FO_Func.FO_COPY
        _ShFile.pFrom = String.Join(vbNullChar, sSource) + vbNullChar
        _ShFile.pTo   = sTarget
        SHFileOperation(_ShFile)
   End Sub

End Class

To copy files and/or folders is as simple as this:

Dim copy_items_paths As List(Of String)
Dim target_path      As String

NativeCopy.Copy(copy_items_paths, target_path)