Automating Movement of Folders

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Posted on by postproduction

Hello Power Automate Community!

I am trying to move folders in one folder to another folder in the same folder.

I know that Power Automate has the "move folder" function but my situation is a bit more complicated than that.

For example, the main folder will have folders entitled "130", "140", and "150". The main folder will constantly be receiving downloaded content as new folders and they will be called, for example "130_helloworld". This folder would need to automatically move to the parent folder of "130". Is there a way to ask Power Automate to scan all the folders in the parent folder (where folders "130", "140", and "150" are located) and then scan if there are any folder with the same name but have an underscore after it (e.g. 130_helloworld) and move it to folder "130".

Thanks a lot and any help would be highly appreciated!

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Power Automate Desktop

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @postproduction
It is possible to do via power automate desktop

see this flow screenshot

Steps used

1. get all folders in directory and store in Folders variable

2. Then use a for loop to loop through the folder under Folders variable

3. inside the loop, done the following thing,
a. Use If action to check whether the Name of folder contains _ (underscore)

b. Inside the if block, done the following things

Use Parse text to retrive the name of folder to which the folder to moved, for eg if the folder name is 130_hello, then i need to retive the name 130 which is the destination folder for this case. for to extract that text regular expression is used \d+(?=_.*) The result of this action is stored in root variable

Next after the Parse text activity, used Move folder activity to move the folder to destination

see the screenshot

Hope the information helps you

Regards,
Nived N

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @postproduction
did the above idea works for you ?

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postproduction 10 on at

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Hi Nived!

Thanks a lot for your comprehensive response.

I have tried what you have instructed me to do but I am getting this error:

Robin.Core.ActionException: Destination folder Z:\TEST\0 doesn't exist.
at Robin.Modules.Folder.Actions.MoveFolder.Execute(ActionContext context)
at Robin.Runtime.Engine.ActionRunner.RunAction(String action, Dictionary`2 inputArguments, Dictionary`2 outputArguments, IActionStatement statement)

I think it might be a problem with the variables that I am using and renaming. Do you know what I can do about this by any chance?

Please let me know if you need more info.

Best,
Shant

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi Shant,
at what section/action you are getting error ?

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postproduction 10 on at

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Hi Nived,

I am getting an error at action 5 ... the move folder action.

Do you happen to know what I can do here?

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tkuehara 667 on at

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Hi @postproduction

It seems you are using the wrong variable. You need to use the value captured from the parse action, not the position. Here's an example with the highlighted correct variable:
Your "Move folder" action would look something like this (feel free to change the default name "Match" to anything suitable to your case):

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postproduction 10 on at

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Hi tkuehara,

Thanks a lot for this information! It worked 🙂

Best,
Shant

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tkuehara 667 on at

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Hi @postproduction,

My pleasure!

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