Conditional copy

I don't know if this is the right place for this, but...

A client of ours is upgrading to Office 2007 and in the process they are having a number of custom macros and templates created. These macros/templates will be changing from time to time (especially while they are new) so we want to make sure everyone has the latest copy of them on their local workstations.

The reason we do not want to have them access the files from the network is that if changes need to be made, people will then have to close word so that the old file can be removed and the new one can be inserted into the templates directory. Also with 60 people using the same templates we want to make sure that there are no access problems/accidental changes made.

I am wondering if somebody can push me in the right direction as far as what would be the best way of doing this. So far I am looking at adding lines to the login.bat script that runs when users login, however I am not too familiar with how to make it check the file versions, and there are about 40 templates so I really don't want to add a line for each one.

If there is anyone who would be willing to help me with the script, or who can suggest a better way of doing this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

 

You could do version checking at login via wsh scripting but like you noticed, you would have to check each file individually.
From an admin standpoint, I would use a network share for templates and only update the templates outside of business hours. To guard against rogue changes, just set share perms to read only for all users.
Here is an example script I found that will check version or size and update the file based on the result.

Set objFileSystem = CreateObject( "Scripting.FileSystemObject ")

strSource = "\\Server\Share\File.exe "
strDestination = "C:\Things\TheProgram\File.exe "

' Update based on Version

strSrcVersion = objFileSystem.GetFileVersion(strSource)
If objFileSystem.FileExists(strDestination) Then
strDstVersion = objFileSystem.GetFileVersion(strDestination)
Else
strDstVersion = " "
End If

If strSrcVersion <> strDstVersion Then
objFileSystem.CopyFile strSource, strDestination, True
End If


' Update based on Size

Set objSrcFile = objFileSystem.GetFile(strSource)
strSrcSize = objSrcFile.Size
If objFileSystem.FileExists(strDestination) Then
Set objDstFile = objFileSystem.GetFile(strDestination)
strDstSize = objDstFile.Size
Else
strDstSize = " "
End If

If strSrcSize <> strDstSize Then
objFileSystem.CopyFile strSource, strDestination, True
End If

 

Have you looked at robocopy which has a switch to only copy files that have changed since the last run or can be used to mirror two locations?