28Feb/106
How to: quickly and easily copy multiple file names to the Windows clipboard
At work, I needed a way to copy about 60 file names from Windows Explorer into an Excel spreadsheet. Copying each one individually seemed like a huge waste of time, so I Googled for a solution.
Turns out there's a slick, free utility called CopyFilenames by ExtraBit. It adds a simple Copy Filename (for a single file) / Copy Filenames (for multiple files) entry to the right-click context menu. Simply install CopyFilenames, right click on one or more files, and choose Copy Filenames. Then paste the list of file names into your application of choice.
See it in action below — in my example I used Excel but you can paste the file names into any application.
Nifty! Saved me a bunch of monkey work.
April 30th, 2010 - 12:46
YAY!!!!!! Thank you!!! I have been searching for something like this for a long time and this is the first thing that really worked. I’m using it to create an Excel workbook of documents from a database where I want to create a log with the document names and some comments for my own reference. Fabulous time saver
April 30th, 2010 - 14:01
Hey Barbara — Cool, glad it saved you some time. I can’t believe I didn’t find this handy little app sooner!
January 3rd, 2012 - 21:25
On the other hand, you may try using dir/b via CLI. from CLI, go into respective folder, type “dir/b” (without quotes), press Enter, and you’ll get listed filename(s). Right-click on CLI, choose Mark, left-drag from top of the list to bottom, and realese. Open xls/notepad, paste
January 10th, 2012 - 20:41
Thanks, duan, for the tip!
June 14th, 2012 - 20:36
I miss command lines like “dir /b >> file.txt” as being the standard go to solutions. Windows will never be as flexible as DOS.
June 21st, 2012 - 15:21
tim – true, but can you imagine today’s masses using DOS?