copy file names from explorer to paste into excel

I've seen lots of complicated ways to do this in this blog but the the easiest and best has to be to use the file navigation facility built into browsers OTHER THAN Internet Explorer.

Here is a fuller 'how to' explanation: 

Install Firefox browser if not already available.

Enter the appropriate disc drive into the address bar e.g C:\ (you can also use the full folder path in reverse slash format e.g. C:\Users\myname\Documents). Navigate down to the the folder required for copy.

A nice neat file list with size and date last modified is displayed.

CTRL A to highlight; CTRL C to copy.

Paste Special into Excel; select Text option (not HTML!); adjust (widen) column sizes.

There you have it;  the list can be sorted in Excel (e.g. by file name or date or size) but not in Firefox which always lists in alphabetical order.

Notes: 

1.  I've not tried it but should also work in Opera and Chrome;  but NOT Microsoft Internet Explorer which unhelpfully takes you back to Windows Explorer.

2.  It may be easier to navigate to the folder using Windows Explorer first (i.e. the file directory accessed from 'Computer').  Then copy the path from the navigate bar and paste to Firefox. If the bar displays in arrow seperated format, convert it to slash separated format by clicking on the folder icon at the start of the Windows Explorer navigate bar. 

3: To remove 'File:' from the start of each file name in the Excel listing do Find and Select; Replace; Find what: "File:"; Replace with nothing; Replace All.

No credit to me for working this out - I found the solution somewhere when I had the same problem.

Select all files

Right Click With Shift Key Down

Click on Copy as Path

Paste to Note Pad , Excel

Will work At least in Windows 7

john

india

works like a charm! thanks so much....

in a nutshell: create a text document in the same directory that you want to extract the file names from. In the blank text document type:

dir /b *.* >dirlist.xls

in this example you will create an excel file called "dirlist" but you can give it any name you want.

Save the file. Then change the extension of the file from ".txt" to ".bat", it will ask you to confirm that you wnat to change the file extension, make sure to reply yes.

The icon of the file changes to "gears" and when you double click on it, it executes the action you just asked it to do (i.e. create the excel file with all the file names).  

Thanks again!

Alessandra

You might be interested in my DirTree add-in, available free at  http://www.cpearson.com/Excel/FolderTree.aspx .

It lists files and folders, optionally indented in a hierarchical manner, along with any number of file attributes (size, type, dates, etc). The output is written to an Excel worksheet for user formatting and printing.