Writing Out What's in a Folder

It can be useful to write out the contents of a folder from a Windows computer.

For example to list out the music tracks or movies you have in a folder as a text file which can then be printed out.

Here's how this can be done:

i) open windows notepad program
Ii) type: dir > MyFileList.txt
Iii) save the file in a folder you want to list the
contents of calling it: FileList.bat

Name the file: FileList.Bat

Go to the folder you saved Filelist.bat .
Double click Filelist.bat to run it (Windows Batch File)

This will create a new file called MyFileList.txt which lists the files in the current folder.

The filelist.bat program you made is versatile
- it can be copied to another directory and ran by double clicking on it to create a list of files in that directory.

Open Myfilelist.txt to see the files listed in the folder. This list can be copied or emailed.

This is an example of a command line (dos) program using a couple of commands:

'dir' to get a list of files in the current folder
'>' to send this list to a file which we named MyFileList.txt

We told the computer this was a command line program by saving the file with the extension '.bat'

It was ran by double clicking on it.

There are other useful commands which can be used in a 'bat' (batch) program, do an Internet search if you want to learn more.