Delete files older than 15 days using PowerShell
PowershellPowershell 2.0Powershell 3.0Powershell Problem Overview
I would like to delete only the files that were created more than 15 days ago in a particular folder. How could I do this using PowerShell?
Powershell Solutions
Solution 1 - Powershell
The given answers will only delete files (which admittedly is what is in the title of this post), but here's some code that will first delete all of the files older than 15 days, and then recursively delete any empty directories that may have been left behind. My code also uses the -Force
option to delete hidden and read-only files as well. Also, I chose to not use aliases as the OP is new to PowerShell and may not understand what gci
, ?
, %
, etc. are.
$limit = (Get-Date).AddDays(-15)
$path = "C:\Some\Path"
# Delete files older than the $limit.
Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer -and $_.CreationTime -lt $limit } | Remove-Item -Force
# Delete any empty directories left behind after deleting the old files.
Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { $_.PSIsContainer -and (Get-ChildItem -Path $_.FullName -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer }) -eq $null } | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse
And of course if you want to see what files/folders will be deleted before actually deleting them, you can just add the -WhatIf
switch to the Remove-Item
cmdlet call at the end of both lines.
If you only want to delete files that haven't been updated in 15 days, vs. created 15 days ago, then you can use $_.LastWriteTime
instead of $_.CreationTime
.
The code shown here is PowerShell v2.0 compatible, but I also show this code and the faster PowerShell v3.0 code as handy reusable functions on my blog.
Solution 2 - Powershell
just simply (PowerShell V5)
Get-ChildItem "C:\temp" -Recurse -File | Where CreationTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-15) | Remove-Item -Force
Solution 3 - Powershell
Another way is to subtract 15 days from the current date and compare CreationTime
against that value:
$root = 'C:\root\folder'
$limit = (Get-Date).AddDays(-15)
Get-ChildItem $root -Recurse | ? {
-not $_.PSIsContainer -and $_.CreationTime -lt $limit
} | Remove-Item
Solution 4 - Powershell
Basically, you iterate over files under the given path, subtract the CreationTime
of each file found from the current time, and compare against the Days
property of the result. The -WhatIf
switch will tell you what will happen without actually deleting the files (which files will be deleted), remove the switch to actually delete the files:
$old = 15
$now = Get-Date
Get-ChildItem $path -Recurse |
Where-Object {-not $_.PSIsContainer -and $now.Subtract($_.CreationTime).Days -gt $old } |
Remove-Item -WhatIf
Solution 5 - Powershell
Try this:
dir C:\PURGE -recurse |
where { ((get-date)-$_.creationTime).days -gt 15 } |
remove-item -force
Solution 6 - Powershell
Esperento57's script doesn't work in older PowerShell versions. This example does:
Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\temp" -Recurse -force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | where {($_.LastwriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-15) ) -and (! $_.PSIsContainer)} | select name| Remove-Item -Verbose -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Solution 7 - Powershell
If you are having problems with the above examples on a Windows 10 box, try replacing .CreationTime
with .LastwriteTime
. This worked for me.
dir C:\locationOfFiles -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Where { ((Get-Date)-$_.LastWriteTime).days -gt 15 } | Remove-Item -Force
Solution 8 - Powershell
Another alternative (15. gets typed to [timespan] automatically):
ls -file | where { (get-date) - $_.creationtime -gt 15. } | Remove-Item -Verbose
Solution 9 - Powershell
$limit = (Get-Date).AddDays(-15)
$path = "C:\Some\Path"
# Delete files older than the $limit.
Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer -and $_.CreationTime -lt $limit } | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse
This will delete old folders and it content.
Solution 10 - Powershell
#----- Define parameters -----#
#----- Get current date ----#
$Now = Get-Date
$Days = "15" #----- define amount of days ----#
$Targetfolder = "C:\Logs" #----- define folder where files are located ----#
$Extension = "*.log" #----- define extension ----#
$Lastwrite = $Now.AddDays(-$Days)
#----- Get files based on lastwrite filter and specified folder ---#
$Files = Get-Children $Targetfolder -include $Extension -Recurse | where {$_.LastwriteTime -le "$Lastwrite"}
foreach ($File in $Files)
{
if ($File -ne $Null)
{
write-host "Deleting File $File" backgroundcolor "DarkRed"
Remove-item $File.Fullname | out-null
}
else
write-host "No more files to delete" -forgroundcolor "Green"
}
}