Get-Childitem and Copy-Item Explanation

You are not looping over each item in the collection of files/folders, but passing the last value to the pipe. You need to use Foreach-item or % to the Copy-Item command. From there, you also do not need the second -recurse switch as you already have every item in the GCI.

try this:

gci $from -Recurse | % {copy-item -Path $_ -Destination  $to -Force -Container }

Here is what worked for me

Get-ChildItem -Path .\ -Recurse -Include *.txt | %{Join-Path -Path $_.Directory -ChildPath $_.Name } | Copy-Item -Destination $to

This works for me:

Get-ChildItem 'c:\source\' -Recurse | % {Copy-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination 'd:\Dest\' -Force -Container }

To loop all items, this should work:

gci -Path $from -Recurse | % { $_ | copy-item -Destination  $to -Force -Container}

Just do the foreach and pipe each item again.

The switches are wrong. They should be:

gci -Path $from -Recurse | copy-item -Destination  $to -Force -Container