How to Get “No To All” Button in Windows

If you ever copy and move a large batch of files, or a group of many files at once from one location to another location, you will be prompt with a “Confirm File Replace” window if there is another file with the same name already exists in the target destination folder. “Confirm File Replace” will have 4 buttons or options for you to choose by default, that’s “Yes”, “Yes to All”, “No” and “Cancel”. There is no “No to All” button on the “Confirm File Replace” pop-up dialog. So if there is not so few or hundreds of existed duplicate files, it will prompt and keep repeating to tell you that this folder already contains a file name “xxx”, and ask you would you like to replace the existing file with this one for not so few times or hundreds of times. If you simply want to replace the existing files, “Yes to All” is simple button to click, but if you decided that you want to keep the existing files, you no need to click on “No” button for that many times.


You will see this warning message dialog whenever there is a file with the same name already existed in the target destination folder. If you have many conflict or identical file names, and want to overwrite and replace the existing one, “Yes to All” will do its job, and once click, won’t prompt you for overwrite confirmation anymore.

If you decide not to overwrite any files with the same name, press and hold on the “Shift” key, and then click on “No” button. This key and mouse sequence will simulate as “No to All”, mean no identical named files will be replaced or overwrote. Instead, Windows Explorer will skip any conflict automatically.

This hack is also useful when the many files that you copied or moved has file size that is very big over a slow connection. At this case, even though you know that the existing files in the destination folder can be safely overwritten or replaced or completely identical, but you wouldn’t click “Yes to All”, as it will take ages to transfer the files over. If you use the trick to perform “No to All”, all files the has the same name are skipped instead of transferred, so the process will end a lot faster.

The tip and trick will work when you copy and move files with Windows Explorer, or My Computer or any Explorer window in most Windows OS such as Windows XP.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 12:47 am and is filed under Operating Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.