Search code examples
vbscript

Overwrite a current file using VBS

I have a pretty small VB script here that just trims a leading space off of file names for a given folder. The problem is when it runs it throws an error message if that same file name already exists. Is there a way to tell the script to overwrite a file if the file name already exists? Syntax below:

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
strFolderName = "\\CORP***\***Share\Common\RFI Validation Outputs"
Set objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(strFolderName)
Set colFiles = objFolder.Files
For Each objFile in colFiles
objFSO.MoveFile strFolderName + "\" + objFile.Name , strFolderName + "\" + LTrim(objFile.Name)
Next
Solution

  • My basic suggestions are along these lines (my VBS is rusty to check this for basic errors please!):

    Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

strFolderName = "\\CORP***\***Share\Common\RFI Validation Outputs"
Set objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(strFolderName)
Set colFiles = objFolder.Files

currName = ""
cleanName = ""
fullCleanPath = ""

For Each objFile in colFiles

    currName = objFile.Name
    cleanName = LTrim(objFile.Name)
    fullCleanPath = strFolderName + "\" + LTrim(objFile.Name)

    if currName <> cleanName and not objFSO.FileExists(fullCleanPath) then
        objFSO.MoveFile objFile.Path , fullCleanPath
    else
        '//Houston, We have a problem
    end if

Next

    However, I would encourage adding some way to do a "dry run" - just a list of the proposed changes with some kind of output to a console or file, plus warnings of the files that already exist and possibly just to make sure it runs through with out errors (or otherwise - well, BACKUP first!)

    As I explained, you will have to decide what to do if you have two files with the same name (except that one has that leading space or spaces) ... overwrite? skip? delete one? decide later?