How to Copy a List of Files to Excel

Since the beginning of the pandemic, working from home has increased rapidly, so being behind the computer has become our daily routine. In the exercise of our activities we have surely encountered the need to copy a list from file to excelIn this article we will teach you how to do it.

Steps to copy a list of files to Excel

If you wish to Copy a list of files to Excel In an easy and quick way, complete the following steps:

Here you can read about: How to Group a Pivot Table by Months in Excel

 

• Step 1:: Open your computer's dialog box by pressing the "Start" + "R" keys simultaneously.
• Step 2:: When the “Run” dialog box appears, type “cmd” and press “enter”.
• Step 3:: I once started the “Symbol of the system”, type “cd” followed by the path of the folder you want to copy and press “enter”. Check out this example: “cd c:\users\Cristina\MyDocuments\Products”.
• Step 4:: then type «dir /b > list.txt» and press «enter». By running this command a file called «list.txt» has been created in the folder you want copy list of files to excel.
• Step 5:: Open the file “list.txt” with “Notepad” and view the name of the files in the folder from which you created the list.
• Step 6:: then select the text by pressing the “Ctrl” + “E” keys at the same time and then right-click the “Mouse” and press “Copy”.
• Step 7:: once the text has been copied, open “Excel” and in a new document simultaneously press “Ctrl» + «V» and your list will be pasted into the Excel spreadsheet.
• Step 8:: if you want to save the document press “F12” and save the list of files to excel in the location you want.

By the way, in the versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 allow you to skip step 3. You just need to navigate to the folder where you want to copy list of files to excel and click on the address bar, delete the content and type “cmd”, press “enter” and the “Command Prompt” will open in the folder.

Another method to copy a list of files to Excel

In this second method I will teach you in a more practical way how Copy a list of files to Excel using DropBox.

With this program you will only have to click with your “Mouse” and you will automatically create a document with the list of files you want to copy into Excel.

How to copy a list of files to Excel with DropBox

Below are the steps you need to follow to copy a list of files to Excel quickly and easily.

• Step 1:: You must download a “Script” that will allow you to perform the action of generating a list of files. You can download them from DropBox.
• Step 2:: Once the file is downloaded, double-click it and press “Extract”.
• Step 3:: After you have extracted the folder, copy the file that ends in “.bat” and paste it into the folder from which you want to copy the list of files for Excel.
• Step 4:: Now you just have to double-click on the file you just pasted and a document called 0000_list.txt will automatically be created, which will be the list of files you want to copy to Excel.

El Script that you downloaded, you can save it in the location you want and apply this same method as many times as necessary.

Why do we copy a list of files to Excel?

As we mentioned at the beginning, since the beginning of the pandemic and with the inclusion of new mobility restrictions, the need to work from home has become our new normal.

For this reason, we have found it necessary to learn various techniques, processes and tips when sitting in front of our personal computer in order to carry out daily activities efficiently.

Thanks to technological advances, we have various applications or packages to optimally carry out our daily activities. And Excel provides us with various solutions such as: copy a list of files and paste it into a document in this fabulous application.

What is Excel?

In the Office package offered by Microsoft, Excel is considered the main work tool since it allows us to carry out various types of activities due to its ability to work with numerical data.

Unlike Become, which is a word processor par excellence, and Power Point, with which we can make presentations and even edit certain types of images, Excel allows us to organize data through columns and rows with which you can perform various mathematical calculations and arithmetic operations.

In this sense, with the inclusion of this powerful tool in our daily activities we will have at hand solutions such as: copy a list of files to excel to then analyze the data and generate the reports relevant to the activity.

File list

When you create a list of files and paste it into Excel, what you are generating is a list with the names of the files contained in a specific folder and emptying it into a “.txt” document, which you can then paste into a spreadsheet and be able to analyze it in the desired way.

I will present you the following example:

Let's say you are a warehouse manager, and you have various processes on your computer that are stored in folders. One day you had to indicate the number of customers who buy cleaning products. Can you imagine transcribing them one by one? This would be very inefficient.

However, Windows has several options with the ability to copy the contents of the folder into a text file (“.txt”), to then be pasted into Excel.

Tips for copying a list of files in Excel

Surely you already learned how Copy a list of files in ExcelWe only recommend that you have patience, intelligence and dedication to achieve the expected results.

You may also like: How to Copy an Excel Sheet to Another Workbook – Tutorial

Conclusion

Remember that with Copy a list of files in Excel You have the possibility to list the contents of your folders and have a better order in your daily activities. If you want to download the DropBox application, click hereWe hope that this brief explanation has helped you to have greater ease in your daily activities.