Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Feb 06, 2022

Copy a file and send that copy via email on a loop

Hi, I was just wondering if there is a way to copy a .txt file to a specific destination and then send that copy via email on a loop that runs every hour or so? I've tried to do it but have had no lu...

Windows PowerShell

Harm_Veenstra

Feb 08, 2022

PandaPoodle

Some error handling and checking 🙂

function Test-FileLock {
    param (
        [parameter(Mandatory = $true)][string]$Path
    )
  
    $oFile = New-Object System.IO.FileInfo $Path
  
    if ((Test-Path -Path $Path) -eq $false) {
        return $false
    }
  
    try {
        $oStream = $oFile.Open([System.IO.FileMode]::Open, [System.IO.FileAccess]::ReadWrite, [System.IO.FileShare]::None)
  
        if ($oStream) {
            $oStream.Close()
        }
        $false
    }
    catch {
        # file is locked by a process.
        return $true
    }
}
  
  
while ($true) {
    #Copying file to other location but checking if it's in use first
    if ((Test-Filelock -path d:\backup\filename.txt) -eq $False) {
        Copy-Item -Path c:\temp\filename.txt -Destination d:\backup -Force:$true
  
        #Sending mail with the file
        Send-MailMessage -SmtpServer smtp.domain.local -port 25 -Subject "Emailing the file" -Body  "See attached file" -Attachments d:\backup\filename.txt -To "Email address removed" -From "Email address removed"
    }
  
    #Wait for 1 hour
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 3600
}

Harm_Veenstra

MVP

Feb 07, 2022

And what do you have so far? You can copy files using copy-item and send an email using send-mailmessage with an attachment that contains that file. You can use a Task Schedule to run the script every hour or only once running a while ($true) {script contents with a start-sleep -seconds 3600} in it?

PandaPoodle
Copper Contributor
Feb 07, 2022
So I’m very new to Powershell, so what I did was run a script that would copy the file to another file every so often. And I ran another instance of powershell that emailed that copy every so often. But they won’t run at the same time. If the copy script is running the email script won’t work. Is there a way I can have both of those tasks run in one script? Again I’m very new to powershell which is probably why I’m having such a hard time with this.
- Harm_Veenstra
  MVP
  Feb 08, 2022
  And you can schedule this and keep it running forever 🙂 Did this work for you?
  - PandaPoodle
    Copper Contributor
    Feb 08, 2022
    It works with one loop but whenever it loops again it doesn't copy the file again. Instead I get an error stating that the Copy-Item cannot access the d:\backup file because its being used by another process. This only happens if I use the email script.
- Harm_Veenstra
  MVP
  Feb 07, 2022
  PandaPoodle
  
  You could try something like
  while ($true) { #Copying file to other location Copy-Item -Path c:\temp\filename.txt -Destination d:\backup -Force:$true #Sending mail with the file Send-MailMessage -SmtpServer smtp.domain.local -port 25 -Subject "Emailing the file" -Body "See attached file" -Attachments d:\backup\filename.txt -To "Email address removed" -From "Email address removed" #Wait for 1 hour Start-Sleep -Seconds 3600 }