copy file names from explorer to paste into excel

Anonymous
2009-06-30T14:00:06+00:00

I am trying to copy a long list of file names in file explorer and paste them into excel so I can keep track of file status, is there an easy way to do this?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Hal Hostetler MVP-Outlook 12,011 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2009-06-30T22:52:55+00:00

Thereare a number of ways to print Directory listings detailed here:

Print directory - Vista Forums

Hal

-- 

Hal Hostetler, CPBE

Senior Engineer/MIS -- MS MVP-Print/Imaging -- WA7BGX

www.kvoa.com -- KVOA Television, Tucson, AZ. 

Live at Hot Licks - www.badnewsbluesband.com

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-12-04T19:47:38+00:00

    Dear MVPs and their supporters/admirers etc etc...

    Allow me to recollect something.

    The original question from the initiator of this thread was "I am trying to copy a long list of file names in file explorer"

    Note, it wasn't  "in any other well designed/written 3rd party software or DOS", but int the "file explorer", distinctively.

    Nevertheless none of the replies in this thread directly answer this question for a simple reason - Windows file explorer is a piece of software written not to fit peoples needs at all.

    To try to actually answer the question:

    The way I was able to trick myself out of this simple situation (copy file names for gods sake!!!) in Widnows 7 explorer was to select the files and then using the Sent to mail recipient option.

    This opened an Outlook new message dialog with  all files attached to the message and thelist of file names in the body of the message.

    This will most likely work only for small files.

    Worked for me.

    Again, I'm surprised at how ridiculous this is: a very simple task takes a number of trial and error attempts, guessing for a workarounds, a number of tries for 3rd party tools and utils.

    And mind you, the Windows File explorer is a part of a commercial OS.

    Actually I think that you should re-read the original question, it does clearly say in the title "copy file names from explorer to paste into excel" and then again in the body: "copy a long list of file names in file explorer and paste them into excel". Both solutions from Hal Hostetler and Chip Pearson, did exactly that, it enabled us to copy the list of files into Excel. I have been using Chip Pearson's DirTree add-in quite a bit and it works very nicely. I do not know about the other solutions as I haven't tried them and I haven't tried your solution but if like me your Internet speed is not very good, or if the list of files very long or if the files are big, it could be time consuming and might not even work.

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-12-03T23:13:21+00:00

    Dear MVPs and their supporters/admirers etc etc...

    Allow me to recollect something.

    The original question from the initiator of this thread was "I am trying to copy a long list of file names in file explorer"

    Note, it wasn't  "in any other well designed/written 3rd party software or DOS", but int the "file explorer", distinctively.

    Nevertheless none of the replies in this thread directly answer this question for a simple reason - Windows file explorer is a piece of software written not to fit peoples needs at all.

    To try to actually answer the question:

    The way I was able to trick myself out of this simple situation (copy file names for gods sake!!!) in Widnows 7 explorer was to select the files and then using the Sent to mail recipient option.

    This opened an Outlook new message dialog with  all files attached to the message and thelist of file names in the body of the message.

    This will most likely work only for small files.

    Worked for me.

    Again, I'm surprised at how ridiculous this is: a very simple task takes a number of trial and error attempts, guessing for a workarounds, a number of tries for 3rd party tools and utils.

    And mind you, the Windows File explorer is a part of a commercial OS.

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