# moving file names to an excell file

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-file-names-to-an-excell-file/260535>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 19, 2004, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-file-names-to-an-excell-file/260535 "2004-08-19T12:46:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![akohl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6a8cbe/32.png) [@akohl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/akohl)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2004, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-file-names-to-an-excell-file/260535/1 "2004-08-19T12:46:40Z")

</div>

Anyone know how to move file names to an excell file with windows 98.  
I’ve just been doing a slow double click, then copy, then move to excell file, then to cell, then paste, and then over and over and over again.

Is there a better way?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2004, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-file-names-to-an-excell-file/260535/2 "2004-08-19T13:07:15Z")

</div>

You can easily dump file names to a text file, which you can then open in Excel.

Click Start, click Run, and type Command, and click OK. This will give you a command window. Navigate to the directory where you files live using the “CD” command. For example, to change to a directory called “MyFiles”, type:

CD\MyFiles

and hit return.

Once you’re where you need to be, copy the file names to a file with the following command:

dir _._ \>\> filenames.txt

That will create a text file called “filenames.txt” that includes all the files in the directory. You can then open that file in Excel and voila, file names!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![akohl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6a8cbe/32.png) [@akohl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/akohl)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2004, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-file-names-to-an-excell-file/260535/3 "2004-09-15T07:48:20Z")

</div>

Sorry I didn’t respond right away!

Your guidance in this matter was very useful.

Thank you.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2004, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-file-names-to-an-excell-file/260535/4 "2004-09-15T08:24:38Z")

</div>

Sometimes I find this Browser trick useful for copying file information:  
[file://_/](file://_/)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lodoen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b3f665/32.png) [@Jeff\_Lodoen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lodoen)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2004, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-file-names-to-an-excell-file/260535/5 "2004-09-15T08:26:57Z")

</div>

There’s a menu extension called [DMEX](http://home.arcor.de/we/wegzumziel/download/dmexinfo.htm) that will do what you want using the clipboard.

© 2000 but still quite usable in XP. And free.