How to print a list of contents of a Folder/Directory

There is no direct way in Windows to make a list of the contents of a folder. If the contents are very limited you can probably just type out a list. But what if there are lots of contents, for example a multi-GB music folder?

Here is what you can do if you need to print out a list of the contents of such folders. You can create a small batch file, and then add it to the right-click context menu, so that all you will have to do is right-click and select Print Directory Contents (or whatever text you want).

First, open Notepad, and type in the following:

@echo off
dir %1 /o:g>c:\directory.txt
start/w notepad/p c:\directory.txt
del c:\directory.txt
exit

Save this in the root of the C drive as print_directory.bat. Now, in order to add this option to the right-click context menu, you will need to edit the default folder properties. In Windows Explorer, go to Tools > Folder Options > File Type. Click on the File Folder file type and then click on the Advanced button at the bottom right. Now, click on the New button. In the Action field, enter the name of the action, such as Print Directory or Print Contents, and in the Application to be used to perform this action field, fill in C:\print_directory.bat. Click OK three times and then close to exit.

Before you do anything, check to see that if you double-click a folder it actually opens normally, because sometimes the Search function gets set as default. You really don’t want to have to right-click every folder and select Open. So let’s fix this first:

Open the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\. Edit the default value (which might have changed to “Open” or “Find”) and change it to Explorer.

Now make sure you can double-click and open folders again, and then you’re ready to test the Print Contents / Directory command you just made. Right-click on a directory and select “Print Directory (or whatever you called it). You will get a pop-up that will ask you where to save “directory.mdi”. This is the Microsoft Document Imaging format, which makes a nice, neat and readable file that will list out the contents of the directory, and then save it. It will open with Microsoft Office Document Imaging.

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