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Why there is an issue?:
I have a habit of organising my folder/files in the file explorer of Windows 10. I don't have the best-organised structure, and thus there is a need that if I update (by adding a file in it) a folder My Pics at some path say Downloads\My Pics and the copy of the same folder which is at Documents\My Pics should also get updated real-time.
What is the issue?:
Is there some way to link two/multiple folders in file explorer so that they are a real-time copy of each other all the time?
If not. Then are there some alternative software/tweaks that will help me in this issue?
PS: This is my first question on superuser so I might not have framed my question properly but feel free to ask me if my problem is not apparent.

moniker729
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  • I think you are looking for foldrre/shortcuts. Google them! – davidgo Sep 19 '20 at 07:49
  • @davidgo Thanks for the reply, but in my case, a shortcut won't do the job as I need the two folders to have different paths. The problem I expressed above is a much-simplified version of my actual requirement. – moniker729 Sep 19 '20 at 07:59
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    Maybe you could provide some context as to why a shortcut won't do? In my eyes this would have looked like a perfect solution. – creyD Sep 19 '20 at 08:02
  • Sorry, when I said folder, I meant symlink. Not sure how well symlinks work in a Windows environment though . – davidgo Sep 19 '20 at 08:09
  • @creyD My bad. I shared a folder with my friends in my class on google drive (some lectures). The path I chose for this was manually uploading the folder to google drive then get a share link for them. But soon I realised the hassle of manually updating each new lectures into the folder from my local copy. I came across Google Backup & Sync only to realise that I should have used it to first automatically to sync my local folder and then get the share link. Now I wanted to link the existing shared folder to my local copy. (All this just not to change the share link {:sweat_smile:} ) – moniker729 Sep 19 '20 at 08:24
  • @davidgo thanks for the correction **harrymc** has provided a solution for the same. I am yet to check it. I hope this solves my problem as the article cited by him says "This trick can be used for all sorts of things, including syncing any folder with programs like Dropbox, **Google Drive**, and OneDrive.". – moniker729 Sep 19 '20 at 08:30

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You are looking for symbolic links: "a term for any file that contains a reference to another file or directory in the form of an absolute or relative path and that affects pathname resolution."

See the article The Complete Guide to Creating Symbolic Links (aka Symlinks) on Windows for a complete treaty of the subject.

harrymc
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