Sometimes with testing (especially with BizTalk), you need to copy or move some or all files in one folder to another, or all files after a given date. But, you want to space out the copy/move of the files, and that’s what I mean by “dripping” them. You want the files to drip in for example every 10 seconds or every minute.

If you are moving the files, instead of copying them, I strongly suggest making a backup of the source directory before running the scripts.

Note that you can sort files in different ways (primarily by Name or CreationTime).

Example #1

cls
$fromFolder = "C:\Dir\From" 
$toFolder = "C:\Dir\To" 

$files = Get-ChidlItem -Path $fromfolder | sort CreationTime

$startFileName = "ABC1.xls"  # only copy this file and files created after it 

$maxFiles = 999 
$fileCounter = 0 
$processedFileCounter = 0 
$foundStartFile = $false 
$sleepSeconds = 15 

foreach ($file in $files) 
{
    $fileCounter += 1 
    Write-Host "$fileCounter : $($file.name)" 

    if ($file.name -eq $startFileName) 
       {
          $foundStartFile = $true 
          Write-Host "Set foundStartFile to true" 
       }

    if ($foundStartFile) 
       {
           $processedFileCounter +=1 
           if ($processedFileCounter -ge $maxFiles) 
               {
                     Write-Host "Stopped because reached maxFiles=$maxFiles"  
                     break 
               }
           Copy-Item -Path $file.FullName -Destionation $toFolder 
           Start-Sleep $sleepSeconds 
       } 
}  
Write-Host "Number of Files Moved: $processedFileCounter "

Example #2

cls
$fromFolder = "C:\Dir\From" 
$toFolder = "C:\Dir\To" 

$files = Get-ChidlItem -Path $fromfolder | sort Name 

$startFileName = "ABC1.xls"  # only copy this file and files created after it 

$maxFiles = 999 
$fileCounter = 0 
$processedFileCounter = 0 
$sleepSeconds = 5

foreach ($file in $files) 
{
     $fileCounter += 1 
     Write-Host "$fileCounter : $($file.name)" 

     # only get files that contain the strings "ABC" or "DEF" in the filename 
     if ( ($file.name.IndexOf("ABC") -gt 0) -or 
          ($file.name.IndexOf("DEF") -gt 0) ) 
        {
          $processedFileCounter  += 1 
           Move-Item -Path $file.Fullname -Destination $toFolder 
           Start-Sleep $sleepSeconds 
        }
} 
Write-Host "Number of Files Moved: $processedFileCounter "