How do you copy the text only of a list of files within a folder?

Question

I have a tonnes of mp3 music files in a folder on my computer. I want to copy the titles and paste into a word document. How do you select all the files but copy only the file names and not the files themselves?

Answer 1

Try this:

1. Click the Start->Run menu item.

2. In the text box, enter

cmd

and press Enter.

3. In the black "DOS box" that opens up, enter the following:

dir /B > C:\list.txt

This will put a text file on your disk with a list of the file names.

4. Go into Word and insert the file C:\list.txt

That should do it.  You might want to delete the text file when you're done with it so it doesn't clutter up the disk.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

I have done this two ways. Both of which require a couple of steps to get done. They also probably require you to download some software.

1. Winmerge built in functionality -

   a. Download and install the free program WinMerge(http://www.download.com/WinMerge/3000-22...

   b. Use WinMerge to compare a directory to itself.

      1. File >> open make sure both the right and left paths are the same.

      2. Make sure to click the "Include Subfolders" option on this dialog box, it probably wouldn't work the way you want without it.

   c. After you click "OK" to run the comparison it may take a minute. After that nothing may show up, that is fine. Click on "view" and make sure that "Show Identical Items" is checked.

   d. Click edit>>Select all

   e. Right click on any item and click the "Copy Filenames" option that shows up in the context menu. That will put every file name in your Microsoft Shared clipboard. Open any application you like for text editing and paste it in there. (Instead of selection "Copy Filenames" you can use the "Copy Pathnames >> Left" option in the same menu. This will include the folder names which is helpful if you have your music arranged by artist.

2.. Windows media player - There was a "Winter fun Pack" or something that would allow you to export a list of all songs to an excel spreadsheet. I did it that way one time. It would require you to have imported all of your music into Windows media player.

Here is a link: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downl... Look under the "Organize Your Music Collection However You Choose" section near the bottom. What I dont' know is wheter or not it will work on current versions of Win Media Player. (Its been a while since I tried it).

Hope this is not too confusing. Its pretty easy once you do it once!

Answer 3

You could open a dos prompt (cmd) and do a dir on that folder, then copy the output and paste it into word

Answer 4

Make lists of Windows files in Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007 using DDFileCatcher.  -link below-

DDFileCatcher makes lists of files (from one file to thousands). It is integrated into Word, from where it is be launched from a menu. Simply drag and drop any number of files onto DDFileCatcher and DDFileCatcher will put the file list into your Word document in formatted tables or plain text. DDFileCatcher also works with Microsoft Excel or as a stand-alone application. Lists over 280 file properties.

Answer 5

Click on start, click on Run and type in cmd

press enter

navigate to the folder containing the files for eg my pc may have c:\music files\my music

if the cmd prompt is: c:\documents and settings\<me> then I would do the following:

c:\documents and settings\me>cd\

c:\>cd music files

c:\music files>cd my music

c:\music files\my music>

Note the ">" symbol denotes the end of the path. In windows explorer I would see "My Music" as per the last line, and the command prompt will show: c:\music files\my music>

cd\ -> go to root directory *(in this example it is c:\

cd <folder name> means change directory to <folder name>

Once at the folder you need to list the contents of, type the following:

dir >c:\music.txt

This will create a text file on c:\ called "music.txt", simply open my computer go to Local Disk (C:) and there it is. This will contain what you need. For the example above, the whole line will look as follows:

c:\music files\my music>dir >c:\music.txt

If you were to type "dir >c:\temp\music.txt", this would also create a temp folder, so the music.txt file will be found in c:\temp instead of just c:\

from the text file, you can copy/paste as you wish - these are just very simply, filenames - nothing more.

Hope that helps a little :)