Digital Light & Color

Ref: The following is an extracted summary of reviewing a number of web pages after Google searching "Directory List to Excel or Word".

If you like me have several external hard drives that are not continuously connected or powered-up but still would like a listing of their contents... ...while utilities and macros are available... ...an Excel or Notepad file can be generated and saved to the internal hard drive for use with Windows Explorer by:
__(1) using 'cmd.exe' to create a *.xls or *.txt file in the directory;
__(2) opening the *.xls file and 'Convert Text to Columns' or opening the *.txt file;
__(3) deleting rows/columns and/or editing text to preferences; and
__(4) saving a copy of the edited *.xls or *.txt file to the internal hard drive.

See: http://www.ncplus.net/~birchbay/tutoria ... /index.htm for screen views. (Vista 32 Home Premium and Office 2007 are illustrated).

This works well for me... because I will place a year's worth of image sets into a main directory with a yr-subject format [2008 Photos] and fill it with the format: yr-dy-mn--subject [080113 Eagle_AlderTree] image set folders. These formats order the directory utilizing Windows defaults. Only the last two years are stored on my internal hard drive with their backup on an external hard drive along with previous years. This seems to meet my needs as I can readily locate image sets with a view of the Excel directory listings... then connect and power up the needed external hard drive if necessary. I should probably add that I keep two sets of backup image files/folders on two separate external hard drives.

Ask if there are questions.

Hi den,

As long as we're OT -- there is a nifty little utility called "quicksfv" at http://www.quicksfv.org/index.html that does all this, and as a bonus creates a md5 hash of every file (so that you can verify its integrity later). The program generates a file with an extension of *.md5, but it is really just a text file (change extension to .txt to read it, for example).

The text file not only has a directory listing, but the md5 hash as well.

Bob W

I make such listnings for my DVDs to find the right DVD containing the searched directory.
I use TREE instead of DIR, the exact syntax is: TREE > filename.txt .
I first open the file in notebook and copy and paste then to word.
I use a 2 column layout in word, so this workflow is easier for me.
In Word i use Courier New as Font, it displays the lines correctly. TREE only shows the directories (folders) while DIR shows the files, too.
For my use i prefare displaying only the folders.
Instead of DVD10 in my above screenshot normally the volume nr. of the drive is displayed, I change that manually to my DVD Number.