copy file names from explorer to paste into excel

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.

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.

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

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