Delete files older than 15 days using PowerShell

Question

I would like to delete only the files that were created more than 15 days ago in a particular folder. How could I do this using PowerShell?

Answer 1

The given answers will only delete files (which admittedly is what is in the title of this post), but here's some code that will first delete all of the files older than 15 days, and then recursively delete any empty directories that may have been left behind. My code also uses the -Force option to delete hidden and read-only files as well. Also, I chose to not use aliases as the OP is new to PowerShell and may not understand what gci, ?, %, etc. are.

$limit = (Get-Date).AddDays(-15)
$path = "C:\Some\Path"

# Delete files older than the $limit.
Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer -and $_.CreationTime -lt $limit } | Remove-Item -Force

# Delete any empty directories left behind after deleting the old files.
Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { $_.PSIsContainer -and (Get-ChildItem -Path $_.FullName -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer }) -eq $null } | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse

And of course if you want to see what files/folders will be deleted before actually deleting them, you can just add the -WhatIf switch to the Remove-Item cmdlet call at the end of both lines.

The code shown here is PowerShell v2.0 compatible, but I also show this code and the faster PowerShell v3.0 code as handy reusable functions on my blog.