Thanks all for replying so far .....

As is often the case, I haven't explained myself properly. So allow me to clarify further : 

(1) The XCOPY above is merely a sample line from a batch file that I created using Excel. That batch file contains hundreds of these XCOPY commands.
(2) Not all of these contain the exclamation mark ('!')
(3) I can't simply drag'n'drop in Explorer because the source folder (F:..textures..) contains thousands of files of which I am copying a few hundred.
(4) I am running the batch file from within a cmd box invoked from the command line in Win XP.

regards,
Andrew