Windows Printing a Folder

Hi guys. Is it possible to print the contents of a folder. I want to print a list of music but there is no 'Print' tab. Even highlighting the contents and right clicking doesn't work.
I can always send it to Office Word and then print it...but there must be a way of doing it from the folder directly??

 

print folder contents

Hi,

I use PrintFolder 1.3 at home to print list of films I have stored on my hd, its freeware, you can get it from here:

http://no-nonsense-software.com/freeware/

It will only output a list of files in that folder though, not other folder names. You can then save the file list to a txt file.

Regards

Justin

 

This has been a pet-hate of mine for years and years and years. Aside from the freeware option (above) there is only one way to do this, and it's via a DOS prompt.

Even in Windows Vista there is no way, other than the old school DOS prompt hack. It's even listed so in the Microsoft Help database, much to my amusement!

Here's a quick guide:

1. Start > Run > "cmd" to get a DOS window
2. Switch to the folder you wish to print using the CD command (if you've only ever used Windows with a mouse over the past 15 years then I'll forgive you if you actually don't know how to do even this basic step!)
3. Type "DIR >list.txt" without the quotes. This is called a Pipe, and it outputs the DIR listing from the screen into a text file called list.txt
4. You can then open list.txt in Word / Excel / Notepad / whatever, delete any bits you don't need and then print as normal.

Hope that helps!

(It's MADNESS there is no GUI way to do this. I bet not even in Windows 7 too!!)

 

Thanks for that, but I'm only half way there. I have the folder contents open in DOS, but I can't get them to open in notepad. How do I do that... What command do I use?

YEEEEEEEEES!! I've done it!! Just type "list.txt notepad" and VIOLA. There may be a shorter way, but I got there in the end...

 

Maybe Sticky?

Sure is good to know, hate to have it get buried.

 

No real need to sticky it - the top match when you Google for "microsoft help print folder list" produces the right page on their knowledge base:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/196628

Can you really believe their suggestion is a SCREENSHOT?!?

Further down, they explain my solution in more detail:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/196158/EN-US/

It really doesn't seem like much to ask to be able to print a list of one's files from within Explorer. Like if I'm backing up some files to DVD, to be able to print a list of the files contained within on a piece of paper to file inside the case (maybe Nero et al can do that, but you see what I'm saying)

 

Incidentally, since they're forcing everyone to dust off their command line skills, have a read about the different switches you can apply to a DIR command to manipulate and filter the output.

Here is a good guide I found: http://www.computerhope.com/dirhlp.htm

 

yep

 

Yep, I tried a screenshot. Ridiculous...

For what it's worth, and for simplification, this is how I did it:

Go to the folder you want to put into DOS, then;
Start>Run, type cmd>
In the DOS window type cd followed by one space, don't press Enter.
Drag and drop the folder onto the command line in DOS, then left click on a blank space and press Enter.
Now type dir> and the folder contents will appear in the window.
Now open Notepad.
In the DOS window, right click, then left click Select All .
In the notepad window, right click, then left click Paste.

Now you can print a file that you can't print using Windows.

 

actually there are quite a few 3rd Party List Builders around. infact its pretty easy to build one yourself


edit

using the DIR method


open up notepad
write in
DIR /S >List.txt
click file save as
all types
Folderprint.bat
save

if you put this into any folder and double click it it will generate a List.txt file for all files folders and subfolders from that directory
alternitively remove the /S if you are only interested in that folder directly
this is also pretty easy to do in .net and would probably only require 10 lines of code max i may write one tonight

if you doing this for music does each file have its corresponding ID3 tag info?

 

I've always used cmd to do it in a tree:

tree /a > output.txt

Gives you the contents of a whole drive etc. quite handy sometimes.

 

I tried this, but the DOS window flashes up for 1/10 of a second and then disappears...

 

Did you point it to the correct directory first?

I.E.

Code:

cd\ 

f:

tree /a > output.txt

Would give a listing of all the files and folders in your F Drive, and place a text file there as F:\output.txt