Creating a list of folders and subfolders

VoucherMan

Does anyone know of a (simple) way to do this?

I decided it's time for a tidy up of the hard drives so want to make a list (text file) of all the folders and subfolders on them.

There seem to be a few ways to make a list of the current directory, and I've also found using dir /s from the command prompt or within a .bat file to make a full list but this includes all the files as well so is a bit big to work with.

Mikebellows

Have a look here...

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000772.htm

Hope this helps.

Mikebellows

You could also do a screen dump (Print Screen) of the directories.

tronator

VoucherMan wrote: »

Does anyone know of a (simple) way to do this?

I decided it's time for a tidy up of the hard drives so want to make a list (text file) of all the folders and subfolders on them.

There seem to be a few ways to make a list of the current directory, and I've also found using dir /s from the command prompt or within a .bat file to make a full list but this includes all the files as well so is a bit big to work with.

try

dir /s /a:d > output.txt

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/dir.mspx?mfr=true

VoucherMan

tronator wrote: »

try

dir /s /a:d > output.txt

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/dir.mspx?mfr=true

Thanks everyone.

This one does the trick.

Then I can import it to Excel & filter out the unwanted stuff to tidy it up. It was a bit too big to work with with all the files as well as folders.



As you've succeeded where I failed with Google - What I'd also like to do is list all the folders & subfolders as before also listing the first file within each folder. (I'm expecting 'forget it - can't be done')

For the smaller drive I could use dir /s without the attributes then just filter out all but the first files in each. But as mentioned earlier the larger drive has too many files to do in one go. I could make 2 or 3 smaller lists but it would be much better if there was a way to do it all in one go.

Jivesinger

VoucherMan wrote: »

As you've succeeded where I failed with Google - What I'd also like to do is list all the folders & subfolders as before also listing the first file within each folder. (I'm expecting 'forget it - can't be done')

You can do this sort of thing with Excel formulae. As you suggest you can use dir /s, but I'll suggest adding a /a-d to take the folders out.

dir /s /a-d >somefile.txt.

Then open somefile.txt in Excel (don't let Excel try to split anything into columns, we want everything in Column A).

What I've done then is add the following formulae in some of the cells in row 4 (which on my version of Windows is where the first directory folder starts)

Cell B4: =SEARCH("Directory of",A4)
Cell C4: =SEARCH("file(s)",A4)
Cell D4: =MID(A4,37,999)
Cell E4: =IF(NOT(ISERROR(C4)),"",IF(NOT(ISERROR(B4)),MID(A4,B4+13,999),E3))
Cell F4: =IF(ISERROR(B2),"",IF(B2=2,D4,""))

Then
* copy these formulae all the way down to the last row in the DIR output
* select the whole spreadsheet, hit Ctrl C to copy, and then right-click to use "Paste Special" to paste the cells over themselves as values
* Then sort all the data rows by column F, then delete all the rows where Column F is blank.

You should end up with column E showing the folder name and F showing the first file. It won't show empty folders mind you.

closed

tree /F (from the cmd window) add on > c:treelist.txt to redirect to a file.

Not what you asked for, but these are useful for seeing what's there, and how big, and cleaning up. Wading through potentially 100's of thousands of files on a spreadsheet seems a complicated way to do it.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/wiztree.html

http://www.voidtools.com/

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

ChiefGrasscutter

Karen's directory printer
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptdirprn.asp