DOS 'move' command messes up permissions

[toomutch]

Hi All,
I have a DOS batch script file that is scheduled to run hourly, to move any PDF files from a bunch of folders, and put them in one folder. When I view the target folder in Windows Explorer, all of the PDF files have a padlock icon on and are not visible over on the workgroup share.

The source folders are shared Dropbox folders (don't know if that makes a difference?). The target folder is on a local drive, but is shared across a workgroup, and the PDF's do not show up on other computers unless the padlock icon is removed. I eventually found that if I change the permissions to add user 'everyone' the padlock icon disappears and the files are visible again, although there are other PDF files in the target folder that have come from a different source, and these don't have the 'everyone' user set, but still show up correctly. If I drag and drop the files using Windows Explorer the same problem arises.

The batch consists of multiple 'move' commands:
move "c:\users\owner\Dropbox\User1\*.pdf" "c:\shares\IncomingPDFs\"
move "c:\users\owner\Dropbox\User2\*.pdf" "c:\shares\IncomingPDFs\"

So... is the batch file the best way of collecting all the PDFs into one folder? Is the 'permissions' thing the actual problem, or does this just get round it?
I could use copy or xcopy but then I would then need to delete the original files so wildcards are out in case the users have added any files between the processing of the copy command and the delete command. Can DOS handle 'for each PDF file in folder...'?

Any suggestins welcome.
toomutch

[Mocabilly]

Did you check out this page?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310316

Contains (seems useful for you):
"By default, an object inherits permissions from its parent object, either at the time of creation or when it is copied or moved to its parent folder. The only exception to this rule occurs when you move an object to a different folder on the same volume. In this case, the original permissions are retained."

[Aracik Dom]

It looks so compilcated.

[SalmiSoft]

DOS can handle 'for each PDF file in folder...' but it is a bit messy. You could do something like this:

@echo off

REM: 'for each PDF file in folder...' demo by SalmiSoft
REM: Copies all PDFs from a number of source directories to
REM: a common target directory.
REM: Files that are successfully copied to the target directory
REM: are deleted from the source directory

setlocal
for %%F in ("c:\users\owner\Dropbox\User1\*.pdf") do call:MOVEPDF %%F
for %%F in ("c:\users\owner\Dropbox\User2\*.pdf") do call:MOVEPDF %%F
endlocal
goto:EOF



:MOVEPDF
  set newfile="c:\shares\IncomingPDFs\%~n1.pdf"
  echo Moving %1 to %newfile%...
  copy %1 "%newfile%"
  if exist %newfile% del %1
goto:EOF

You will want to add more error checking, but this should get you started.