I wanted to create a text file of a directory listing but didn’t know how. A simple search on the net and a little browsing brought me these simple instructions that will let me create a text file on any directory with a simple right click.
I just finished using it to create a text list of my iTunes subfolders and files. It works perfectly!
- Open Notepad, and then copy and paste the following three lines of text into it:
@echo off
dir %1 /-p /S /D /o:gn > C:\Temp.txt
exit - Save the file as Dir2Txt.bat in the root of the C:\Windows directory, and then close Notepad.
- Start Windows Explorer, click Tools, and then click Folder Options.
- Click the File Types tab, and then scroll down the list of registered file types until you find the Folder entry in the ‘File Types’ column. (You may find it easier to find if you sort the entries alphabetically by clicking on the grey bar at the top of the ‘File Types’ column).
- Click on the Folder entry to highlight it.
- Click on the Advanced button.
- Click on the New button.
- In the Action box, type Directory To Text File.
- In the ‘Application used to perform action’ box, click browse and locate the Dir2Txt.bat you saved in step 2. Then click OK.
- In the Edit Filetype box, click on the Explore action and then on the Set Default button. Explore will turn to bold. (Personally I set OPEN to default instead of Explore).
- Click on OK then on OK again.
- Open Windows Explorer, right-click the folder that you would like to create a text file of, and you should see a new entry – Directory To Text File. Click on it and a text file called C:\Temp.txt will be created. This file can be opened with Notepad and will contain a detailed listing of the directory’s contents – including sub-directories. This can be printed out if required after formatting.
Note: The required filename (C:\Temp.txt) can be changed in the bat file if required and the existing text file is overwritten each time, so move or rename it if you want to keep it.