# How to Get a List of File Names from a Windows Folder? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 13, 2013, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792 "2013-11-13T05:36:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792/41 "2014-01-23T01:36:47Z")
> [@Lazlo Hapsburg](#): > > The implication seems to be that you are saying that article said “it went out of business” among other things. > > I took a second look at the article but I couldn’t find any of that anywhere. You don’t see this (“He helped found the company Mirror Worlds Technologies, which in 2001 released Scopeware software using ideas from his 1992 book Mirror Worlds. Gelernter believed that computers can free users from being filing clerks by organizing their data. The company announced it would “cease operations effective May 15, 2004”. A related company Mirror Worlds, LLC recently had their patent infringement verdict against Apple, Inc. overturned in the Eastern District of Texas.”) in the Wikipedia article on David Gelertner? ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Wayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4bbf92/32.png) [@Charlie\_Wayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Wayne)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792/42 "2014-01-23T01:40:01Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > You don’t see this (“He helped found the company Mirror Worlds Technologies, which in 2001 released Scopeware software using ideas from his 1992 book Mirror Worlds. Gelernter believed that computers can free users from being filing clerks by organizing their data. The company announced it would “cease operations effective May 15, 2004”. A related company Mirror Worlds, LLC recently had their patent infringement verdict against Apple, Inc. overturned in the Eastern District of Texas.”) in the Wikipedia article on David Gelertner? My interpretation of that was not that the company went out of business but that it was sold to Mirror Worlds Technologies. Nowhere did it say it went out of business because it couldn’t sell its product. No one said that except for Dr. Strangelove above. Dr. Strangelove said, “What it said was:” and then produced some italicized text. That made it look like it was the article that said that. But unless I’m mistaken, the article never said that at all. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792/43 "2014-01-23T01:56:35Z")
“Cease operations” means “went out of business.” ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792/44 "2014-01-23T01:56:55Z")
> [@Lazlo Hapsburg](#): > > Dr. Strangelove said, “What it said was:” and then produced some italicized text. That made it look like it was the article that said that. But unless I’m mistaken, the article never said that at all. I was referencing the Wall Street Journal article that I linked to above (in post #36). [Here it is again](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203833104577072162782422558). My italicized text was indeed a direct quote from the article. Mirror Worlds, LLC is a subsidiary of Plainfield Specialty Holdings and is, in all likelihood, a tiny, dark, empty office–a shell company. Its only value is in the patents they hold on behalf of Plainfield. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Wayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4bbf92/32.png) [@Charlie\_Wayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Wayne)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792/45 "2014-01-23T02:00:39Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > I was referencing the Wall Street Journal article that I linked to above (in post #36). [Here it is again](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203833104577072162782422558). My italicized text was indeed a direct quote from the article. > > Mirror Worlds, LLC is a subsidiary of Plainfield Specialty Holdings and is, in all likelihood, a tiny, dark, empty office–a shell company. Its only value is in the patents they hold on behalf of Plainfield. Oh. OK. But you never said you were quoting some other article and so I couldn’t know that. In any event, I’m worried that we are now hijacking this thread and so please either start a new thread in Great Debates to debate this issue or let it die. I won’t be participating in any further debate. I’m sorry if I unfairly implied you were being dishonest and I retract that statement. Best wishes to you. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792/46 "2014-01-23T02:03:23Z")
> [@Lazlo Hapsburg](#): > > I understand. When computers occupied an entire room, the idea of a desktop computer sounded like a load of crap. > > His name is David Gelernter and he is a Yale professor and he created a software package to illustrate his ideas. He is a very brilliant man and won some prestigious awards for his work. > > His concept takes some thinking to understand. I read his paper on Lifestreams and I don’t think there is much to disagree with in there, but all pretty obvious stuff and fairly focused on a particular style/type of use (i.e. one in which a chronological structure makes sense, although he could have chosen some other base form of structure). Attribute and text searching based document management has been around for a long time and has pros and cons just like hierarchical storage has pros and cons. There are things I do where hierarchical is absolutely the way to go (projects and all of the files/documents associated with them), and there are other things where I use attribute and text based searching tools (for example application/system documentation). ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792/47 "2014-01-23T02:06:33Z")
> [@Lazlo Hapsburg](#): > > I’m sorry if I unfairly implied you were being dishonest and I retract that statement. No offense taken. The link in post #36 was fairly hard to see. Trinopus got an answer, so a bit of a hijack is ok (though I wouldn’t mind continuing the debate in another thread). ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792/48 "2014-01-23T02:22:40Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > . . . Sorry, I _know_ this is annoying and I really don’t do so much of the Macintosh fanboyz stuff these days, but DAMN, how can an operating system lack the innate capacity to make it easy for users to obtain a freaking file listing as textstring? It’s something I need to do several times per year. It shouldn’t require programming skillz! Grin! No worries! The occasional Mac/Win fan feud is cool with me. And you’re right: such a very elementary operation ought to be easy. Even having to press shift-right-click and choose an option is a step or two more than ought to be necessary. Until that was pointed out to me, I’d been dropping into Dos mode and using old Dos commands. “dir \> list.txt” It works! I’ve been around since old eight-character file names! Windows does a lot to make things easy. Every now and then, they drop the ball. (Hell, I’ve been around since naked processors, and programming via bit strings entered on paddle switches. Doggone!) ---
**Author:** ![Lukeinva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lukeinva/32/17872_2.png) [@Lukeinva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lukeinva)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792/49 "2014-01-23T02:25:07Z")
Open the directory in a browser by putting the drive name where the URL goes (e.g., c:\dirname) and hit enter. The browser will display all the files in that directory. Press Ctrl-A to select all and then Ctrl-C to cut, lastly Ctrl-V to paste in an editor. This will give you the text file that you want but you’ll have to manually weed out the details for a nice clean result. This worked for me using Opera. It did not work using IE because Windows will only bring up directories with Explorer. I didn’t test any other browsers. ---
**Author:** ![tim-n-va](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim-n-va/32/3001_2.png) [@tim-n-va](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim-n-va)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792/50 "2014-01-23T15:17:31Z")
Using the “Copy as path” function and pasting into excel you can use the find function to get the last “” and then split the file name from the path. To get subfolders, just search for \* and use the “Copy as path” on the search results. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-a-list-of-file-names-from-a-windows-folder/673792.md?page=2)