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

Posted by Ivo Bosticky on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Ivo Bosticky
Published on 2010-04-16T04:22:42Z Indexed on 2010/04/16 4:23 UTC
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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.

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