How can I remove special characters from filenames while keeping some?

If the filenames you're copying have strange characters that resemble emojis, they might be corrupted files. Can you open them normally? If you manually rename them and then copy them, does it work? That could give you a clue! I had similar issues before and found that opening or renaming often solved the problem.

It could be an issue with how Robocopy handles the file paths. Since you're using a batch file and not PowerShell directly, make sure you're using the correct parameters in your script. Just a tip: if your errors are about special characters, check if you're using the -Path parameter instead of -LiteralPath, since the latter avoids wildcard issues that can break due to funky characters.

You might want to consider using a regex pattern to clean up those filenames. Something like this could work: [^p{L}p{N}._-()&?#$ ]. It replaces any character that doesn't meet your criteria with an empty string. Give it a try!

Another approach is to create a loop in your script that goes through each filename and replaces any character that isn't a-z, A-Z, 0-9, or the ones you want to keep. That way, you can ensure you're only left with what's necessary!