Close Explorer window by varying ID or filename

Question

I've been scouring these forums for hours trying to figure out a way to code something that I thought would be much more simple than this.

So here's what I'm trying to do: My task scheduler runs a script every two days. The script opens an explorer.exe path to a folder, and then deletes all of the files in that folder. The scheduler runs the script at night while I'm not in office. However, when I get into the office, the explorer window is open to that page. Trivial, I know - but i don't want to see that window open, so I want the script to run, and then close the window, so I don't see anything.

I've tried this every which way. When I try to do something simple like

$var1 = invoke-item C:\path\file
$var1.quit()

or

$var1.close()

but when I do that, I get an error message saying that the variable is null.

Then I tried stopping the process. But I don't want all explorer files to close, just that particular explorer window to close. So in order to do that, I have to know the ID of the window. But since the ID of that particular window is not static, I need to get the process ID - assign it to a variable - then use the stop-process cmdlet using the variable.

This is what I'm trying now:

get-process | where-object {$_.MainWindowTitle -eq "filename"} | select -property id | $var2

However, when I run this script, it's still saying that the variable is null.

So how do I assign a value to a variable? Or if anyone has a better way of closing a specific window.

(I've tried using the stop-process using just the mainwindowtitle - but it still wants an id)

Answer 1

If you really want to close a specific File Explorer window, then you would need to use Shell.Application. List opens file explorer windows:

$shell = New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application
$shell.Windows() | Format-Table Name, LocationName, LocationURL

Name          LocationName LocationURL           
----          ------------ -----------           
File Explorer Windows      file:///C:/Windows    
File Explorer folder       file:///C:/path/folder

I want to close the one in c:\path\folde, so lets find it and close it:

$shell = New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application
$window = $shell.Windows() | Where-Object { $_.LocationURL -like "$(([uri]"c:\path\folder").AbsoluteUri)*" }
$window | ForEach-Object { $_.Quit() }

However as mentioned in the comments, you're overcomplicating this. The point of PowerShell is to automate it, which usually means you don't want to use a GUI at all. I'm not sure what you want to remove or keep etc. but here's a sample you can work with:

#Get contents of folder (not recursive)
Get-ChildItem -Path 'c:\path\folder' |
#Only files
Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer } |
#Remove...
Remove-Item