FileNotFoundError: [WinError 3] The system cannot find the path specified when the files actually exist

Question

I am trying to work on copying files to a different directory based on a specific file name listed in excel. I am using shutil to copy files from one directory to another directory, but it keep showing the FileNotFound.

This is the error message:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:PythonHellWorldTestCopyPaste.py", line 20, in <module>
    shutil.copytree(i, output_file, dirs_exist_ok=True)
  File "C:UsersAsusAnaconda3envsuntitledlibshutil.py", line 556, in copytree
    with os.scandir(src) as itr:
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 3] The system cannot find the path specified: 'Test.pdf'

I am still new to python, please let me know if there’s any part can be enhanced 🙂

Below are my codes:

import os
import shutil
import pandas as pd

#Set file path
input_file = "C:\Users\Asus\Desktop\Python\Input\"
output_file = "C:\Users\Asus\Desktop\Python\Output\"

#Set new variable for the file path to store the list of files
file_list = os.listdir(input_file)

#search the required file name that need to copy to another location
#Create loop to search the files
condition = pd.read_excel(r'C:\Users\Asus\Desktop\PythonCondition.xlsx')

for i in file_list:
    for filename in condition:
        if filename in i:
            print(i)
            shutil.copytree(i, output_file, dirs_exist_ok=True)

Asked By: yi an lam

||

Source

Answer 1

As mentioned in comments one issue is that you aren’t joining the filename to the full filepath ("input_file").
I’m not really familiar with shutil but I believe the function you want to use is shutil.copy not shutil.copytree. It looks like copytree copies the directory structure of a specified source directory and you are specifically only looking at a list of files within a top level directory. Another issue is how you are reading the excel file.

Assuming the files are listed in a single column it should be something like:

condition = pd.read_excel("C:\Users\Asus\Desktop\Python\Condition.xlsx",index_col=None,header=None)

(I also removed your ‘r’ prefix to the string in this part)

Then to get the items in the first column: condition[0].tolist()

I also believe the second for loop is unnecessary. You can use the same if statement you already have in a single loop.

The following is my solution, just change he paths to what you want. I changed variable names to make it a little more readable as well.

(assumes all files are listed in a single column in excel with no header. And all file are in the input file directory with no subdirectories)

import os
import shutil
import pandas as pd

#Set file path
input_file_dir = "C:\Users\myusername\py\input\"
output_file_dir = "C:\Users\myusername\py\output\"

#Set new variable for the file path to store the list of files
file_list_from_dir = os.listdir(input_file_dir)

#search the required file name that need to copy to another location
#Create loop to search the files
file_list_from_excel = pd.read_excel("C:\Users\myusername\py\Condition.xlsx",index_col=None,header=None)

file_list_from_excel = file_list_from_excel[0].tolist()

for thefileNameinDir in file_list_from_dir: 
    if thefileNameinDir in file_list_from_excel:
        print(f"File matched: {thefileNameinDir}")
        tempSourcePath = os.path.join(input_file_dir,thefileNameinDir)
        shutil.copy(tempSourcePath, output_file_dir)

Answered By: kconsiglio

FileNotFoundError: [WinError 3] The system cannot find the path specified when the files actually exist

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