Windows – How to copy files pointed to (not the shortcut files themselves)

copy/pasteshortcutswindows

I have a folder containing shortcuts that point to files that are located in various directories and drives. I would like to copy the files pointed to (NOT the
shortcut files themselves) to a single destination folder.

Is there a way in windows (XP, Vista, 7), file manager, or some utility I can use to do this?

I've heard you can do this with various multi-step custom scripts. However,
I've heard rumors there is a one click way to do this without having to
fabricate a custom script each time, where regardless where the shortcuts
point to, I can select the group of shortcuts and do a copy operation that
will grab the files they point to. Then, I can paste or otherwise put the
actual files (not shortcuts) into one directory.

It would be very time consuming to manually find each file pointed to by a shortcut and one by one copy them to the target folder.

Note that I've seen this question asked before on the internet but haven't seen a good answer.

Best Answer

I think the answer is no because a shortcut is not really a symbolic link in the same way it is in linux. The concept of symbolic link was introduced as part of NTFS 5.0, but they apply to directories, not files. Things may have changed in windows 7, I admit to being clueless there. Shell-shocked has a good article on Windows Symbolic and Hard Links.

It would be cool to be proven wrong on this one, because this is a problem I would love to have a solution to at work!

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