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How to list all text files in a directory?

Help me output a list of files in a directory to Excel or HTML...

  • How can I output a list of files in a specified folder, including certain file attributes (i.e. date created, date modified, etc), to a HTML or spreadsheet file? I'm using Windows XP. I know it's a simple question, but all of the search terms I've used are too common to yield good results, and some of the software I've found appears to be somewhat "sketchy". I need a piece of software (or some kind of extension to Windows Explorer) that will allow me to output a list of files in a given directory, including the file name, date created, file comments, and any other attributes tied to the file. Ideally the output would be in a spreadsheet or HTML format. Is there a (preferably free) piece of software out there that accomplishes this task?

  • Answer:

    If you paste the below code into an Excel VBA module (ALT F11, right click and insert new module and paste this code there). Then go back to your main Excel window and hit ALT F8. This should let you run the macro GetFileList. What this doesn't give you is the file comments. THis can be done but requires dsofile.dll to be installed on your PC. Post back if you need that too..... Option Explicit Sub GetFileList() Dim strFolder As String Dim varFileList As Variant Dim FSO As Object, myFile As Object Dim myResults As Variant Dim l As Long ' Get the directory from the user With Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFolderPicker) .Show If .SelectedItems.Count = 0 Then Exit Sub 'user cancelled strFolder = .SelectedItems(1) End With ' Get a list of all the files in this directory. ' Note that this isn't recursive... although it could be... varFileList = fcnGetFileList(strFolder) If Not IsArray(varFileList) Then MsgBox "No files found.", vbInformation Exit Sub End If ' Now let's get all the details for these files ' and place them into an array so it's quick to dump to XL. ReDim myResults(0 To UBound(varFileList) + 1, 0 To 5) ' place make some headers in the array myResults(0, 0) = "Filename" myResults(0, 1) = "Size" myResults(0, 2) = "Created" myResults(0, 3) = "Modified" myResults(0, 4) = "Accessed" myResults(0, 5) = "Full path" Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") ' Loop through our files For l = 0 To UBound(varFileList) Set myFile = FSO.GetFile(CStr(varFileList(l))) myResults(l + 1, 0) = CStr(varFileList(l)) myResults(l + 1, 1) = myFile.Size myResults(l + 1, 2) = myFile.DateCreated myResults(l + 1, 3) = myFile.DateLastModified myResults(l + 1, 4) = myFile.DateLastAccessed myResults(l + 1, 5) = myFile.path Next l ' Dump these to a worksheet fcnDumpToWorksheet myResults 'tidy up Set myFile = Nothing Set FSO = Nothing End Sub Private Function fcnGetFileList(ByVal strPath As String, Optional strFilter As String) As Variant ' Returns a one dimensional array with filenames ' Otherwise returns False Dim f As String Dim i As Integer Dim FileList() As String If strFilter = "" Then strFilter = "*.*" Select Case Right$(strPath, 1) Case "\", "/" strPath = Left$(strPath, Len(strPath) - 1) End Select ReDim Preserve FileList(0) f = Dir$(strPath & "\" & strFilter) Do While Len(f) > 0 ReDim Preserve FileList(i) As String FileList(i) = f i = i + 1 f = Dir$() Loop If FileList(0) Empty Then fcnGetFileList = FileList Else fcnGetFileList = False End If End Function Private Sub fcnDumpToWorksheet(varData As Variant, Optional mySh As Worksheet) Dim iSheetsInNew As Integer Dim sh As Worksheet, wb As Workbook Dim myColumnHeaders() As String Dim l As Long, NoOfRows As Long If mySh Is Nothing Then 'make a workbook if we didn't get a worksheet iSheetsInNew = Application.SheetsInNewWorkbook Application.SheetsInNewWorkbook = 1 Set wb = Application.Workbooks.Add Application.SheetsInNewWorkbook = iSheetsInNew Set sh = wb.Sheets(1) Else Set mySh = sh End If With sh Range(.Cells(1, 1), .Cells(UBound(varData, 1) + 1, UBound(varData, 2) + 1)) = varData .UsedRange.Columns.AutoFit End With Set sh = Nothing Set wb = Nothing End Sub>

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If you drop to a command line and run the following: dir C:\mydirectory\*.* >>foo.txt ... it will output the directory listing to a fixed-width text file, which you can then bring into Excel and manipualte to your heart's content. If you want an automated solution to do this on a regular basis, it would be a five-minute job to write either a piece of VBA (for Excel format) or Perl (for HTML) that can output it directly in the format you want.

Doofus Magoo

Search for freeware called FolderPrint. Last I saw, it wasn't especially sophisticated or complex. I don't recall what file attributes it listed.

Dave 9

Doofus Magoo: Something like dir in a batch file was what I was thinking of, but I can't figure out how to get dir to output file comments. I know nothing of VBA or Perl, unfortunately. Dave 9: I tried Folderprint, but for some reason it won't extract file comments properly, and it costs $22, which seems high to me for what I'm looking for. Any other ideas? Any VBA or Perl experts out there that want to help out a fellow mefite?

gwenzel

Missed that little chunk of your original request. What do you mean by "file comments?"

Doofus Magoo

If you right-click on a file in Windows, and select "properties", and click on the "summary" tab, a number of options are available. I'm planning on using the "comments" (or perhaps the "title") field to enter a description for each document (a PDF file). By the time I'm done, I expect to have at least a few thousand PDF files, and using one of the file attribute fields allows me to keep the files indexed without maintaining a separate list of documents. I just need a way to extract that data, along with the file name and "file created" dates, and export it to a format that can be easily manipulated, printed, or whatnot.

gwenzel

NailsTheCat: Thanks very much - that looks like what I need. I don't have the dsofile.dll though. I've done alt-F11 in Excel, but it doesn't seem to do anything. I'm fairly computer literate, but scripting isn't something that I have any experience with... can you break down the instructions a little more? Thanks again!

gwenzel

The above code just gave you the basic file info. It didn't give you the Title etc. I've added the code to do that. You can download an Excel workbook from http://www.garhoo.com/vba/GetFILEINFO.xls to see it in action. Just click the big grey button. It will work without dsofile.dll but it won't give you the extra fields you want - no way around that as far as I can tell. So you can just d/l that too (http://download.microsoft.com/download/office97dev/utility/2/win98/en-us/dsofile.exe). (Just doubleclick to install. You can leave as is in its default directory or move the dsofile.dll to c:\windows\system32\ and delete the other example files it installs.) Once you have dsofile.dll on your 'puter you should get a list of all your files in the selected directory plus those Title, Comments, Subject fields too. I don't know why ALT+F11 doesn't work for you :( but you can also access the VBE from Tools \ Macros \ Visual Basic Editor. That's where you would have inserted the above code. (Not that you need to now you can d/l the workbook.) Note, the workbook (obviously) contains macros. So you may need to change your security options (Tools \ Macros \ Security) to Medium and then open the file, clicking on enable if you get the security prompt. (You can always open disabled first, open the VBE and examine the code to check there's nothing nefarious in there - can't be too careful!) HTH - post back if it doesn't (or email in profile). It's actually quite neat - I may use this myself!!

NailsTheCat

OK - and of course you can also use DSO to write back to the file too. So you can update your Title fields etc. in Excel and then save that back to the file. Just tested it (code is in the file). I'd have to make it a little more user friendly for ya. If you want to test that for now, just select a row (or cell) on the spreadsheet row of the file you want to update, press ALT+F8 and select 'UpdateFileInfo' and click Run. I'm definitely going to use this now!!

NailsTheCat

NailsTheCat: That looks awesome, but I'm getting a glitch - I've figured out the alt-F11 problem (just a keyboard setting that had F-keys disabled) and entered the code into Excel. I've downloaded your sample worksheet, and opened it in Excel; problem is, the grey button gives an error - "Compile error: variable not defined". Any ideas? I'm using Excel 2000, if that makes a difference. I haven't got to the point of having this work yet, but it sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. Thanks so much for your efforts thus far! If you want to move this to e-mail, my address is also in my profile.

gwenzel

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