merging folders together
 

So my computer had a major crash, wouldn't even boot up. I managed to get to BIOS and did a system restore, but most of my files and programs were inoperable/lost.

I reinstalled the programs and used a file recovery program to retrieve my important files. The problem is that it saved all my files in a seperate folder (my documents) and in 2 versions (the other I assume from an earlier crash I had perhaps 2 years ago)

There are a ton of files, with a lot of duplicates among the 3 "my documents" I have. Each of these has numerous subdirectories, each with their own mass of files.

Is there any way I can merge these together without manually assembling this mess?

I believe if you copy one of the "my document" into the folder containing the other "my document" a dialog will appear informing you that there is already a "my document" folder, it will ask you if you want to overwrite it, which will merge the folder.

This is assuming that there aren't any files in "my document"-1 with the same name and different content than those that are within "my document"-2. If that's not the case, then you should do it in order such that copying "my document"-1 is the most recent version of files, gets pasted in the folder containing "my document"-2 and click on "Overwrite", otherwise, it wouldn't really matter which order you overwrite files.

I'm not too sure if my answer is relevant to your question

But will this work with all subdirectories- Bring them together in a tidy package?
I got freaked out when I got the message that the files in a pre-existing folder would be replaced. Is that selective only of duplicates, or will all the files in that subfolder of mydocuments be replaced with the files i'm moving over?

I would use a compare utility - the one I use (beyond compare, from www.scootersoftware.com) can recurse sub-directories, compare files by date/content and more, and relatively easily copy files from one side to the other...

It is not free but has a 30 day trial...

That's only selective of duplicates, it will be merged.

Say my document looks like the following:

My Document
text.txt
-My Folder
text.txt
txt2.txt

My Document 2
text.txt
-My Folder
text.txt
another.txt

If you copy My Document 2 into the same location as My Document, it will look like this

My Document
text.txt (The my document 2 version)
-My Folder
text.txt (The my document 2 version)
txt2.txt
another.txt

If that's the solution you want to do, then it's the simpliest. Using a software to help you do those sorts of thing is a waste of time. Otherwise, the software mentioned above would help you decide which similarily named file in the same place would be replaced.

Thanks feelgood, I appreciate the help.

Hmm sometimes I feel like I know a lot about computers and other times (like now) I know very little about just a basic function.

It seems to be working right now. I'll be able to check in an hour or so