Move images and videos into directories in another root folder by year/month

[ericnotthered]

I've been struggling to move files from the current directory into a year/month structure based on the CreateDate under a different root folder.  The files are mostly in mp4 format.

I can successfully move these files to subfolders of the current directory by using the command: 

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exiftool -d %Y/%m "-directory<CreateDate" .

They end up in YYYY/MM directories within the current directory as expected.  However, I wish to move the files to subfolders of a different root folder:  "g:\sorted"

I tried following the advice the advice in these posts: 
https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=12577.0
https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=11887.0

From that, I derived the command:

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exiftool -d %Y/%m "-directory<g:/sorted/$CreateDate" .

This gives me these warnings for each of the files, and nothing is moved:

Warning: No writable tags set from VID_20210609_072910.mp4
Warning: Invalid tag name 'g:/sorted/'. Use '=' not '<' to assign a tag value - VID_20210609_072910.mp4

If I change the '<' to a '=' like this:

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exiftool -d %Y/%m "-directory=G:/sorted/$CreateDate" .

exiftool moves all of the files to the folder "g:\sorted" (no sub-directories are created).

I'm stumped.  I'd greatly appreciate any pointers. 

I'm using exiftool 12.4.3.0. on Windows 11.

- Eric

[ericnotthered]

I figured it out from another post:

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exiftool -d "g:/sorted/%Y/%m" "-directory<CreateDate" .

I'll leave this hear in case someone else runs into the same challenge.

[StarGeek]

Were you using PowerShell or CMD.

In PowerShell, you probably have to use single quotes around commands that have a dollar sign in them, otherwise it will think it's a shell variable.  The highlighting in the command will tell you when PS thinks something is different.  Notice here how $CreateDate has different highlighting