How do I split thousands of pictures into multiple folders at once?

Time for some lessons in old fashioned pre-windows computing. Way back in the day, before Windows, there was such a thing as DOS (MS-DOS, PC-DOS).

You don’t say how you want them divided, so I’m going to describe doing it alphabetically. You can adjust it you need to.

1. First, in Windows, type in COMMAND or CMD. That will put you in DOS command mode.

2. Decide where you’re going to put the pictures. For this example, I’m going to say the c:\pictures directory. You can put yours anywhere.

3. Type c:\ <return> which will put you at the top level of your disk

4. type MKDIR Pictures (you are making a new directory for pictures)

5.type CD Pictures – changed directory to the Pictures directory.

6. You are going to make 26 subdirectories (folders) one for each letter of the alphabet:
MKDIR A
MKDIR B
MKDIR C
and so on
These directories will be the target for when you do your copying.

7. Figure out where the pictures currently are. For our purposes, let’s say there are in C:\PICS\OLDPICS. (Obviously they will be different for you.

8. Go there. CD C:\PICS\OLDPICS

9. Now for the fun. You are going to do this 26 times, once for each letter of the alphabet

COPY A* c:\Pictures\A
which means -> copy all pictures in the old folder that begin with ‘A’ to the new subfolder A that we just created.

Now do it for all the pictures that start with B
COPY B* c:\Pictures\B

and so on.

There are probably other ways, but this is easy and foolproof.

@elbanditoroso

I want to thank you for taking the time in your day to help me with this problem. Your profile says you had 16,623 responses. That is simply amazing!

Your answer helped me a lot but I’m not computer savvy so I’m just going to tell you the folders names.

C:\Users\MATT\Pictures\testing split

inside testing split folder there are two other folders named: Mother-ship and Division.

There are 54 photos inside Mother-ship and all 54 photos will split into 54 sub-folders in Division. One photo per folder.

Could you write the codes again using the information I gave you please? If you want you could also write PowerShell codes. I’m learning so much on the internet about PowerShell and command prompt.

Thanks

What is your goal? It sounds like you have an old computer as well. It would take you months and months to manually do that with this volume and an old non responsive computer.
Get a new computer and software to do the work for you. That is what computers are made for.
You really need software to catalog those photos. I have about 100,000 digital images and GB’s of music..
Folder sorting will only work for you if you have 100 images or so.
If you have that many digital photo’s or music files then you need software that can do it for you.

@Forever_Free What software do you like to use to catalog your photos?