Windows: print list of files & folders easily

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For how to print a listing of files and folders in a particular Windows directory or folder on your computer (including external hard drives), Karen's free Directory Printer is a great sophisticated tool with the ability to drill down and print the contents of selected subfolders too.

But if you only want a quick and dirty printout listing the names of the files and top level folders in one particular folder (and you don't need a list of what's inside sub-directories too), here's a tip - simply use a web browser. And, if your folder structure is not too complex, you can navigate to and get and print subfolder listings without too much trouble too.

Note that this trick doesn't work with Internet Explorer, which just opens up a Windows Explorer window showing the contents of the folder - but it works with all other popular free browsers like Firefox, Opera, and even Google's Chrome.

How to print listing of files and folders in a particular directory or folder

1. Open Windows Explorer or My Computer and navigate to the folder you want; open it so you're viewing its contents.
   
   
   
2. Click in the address bar (or hold down Alt and tap d). This displays the "real" folder address or path and highlights it.
   
   
   
3. Copy the selected address into clipboard (rightclick it and Copy or hold down Ctrl and tap c).
4. Now go to your browser (use anything but IE - try Firefox).
5. Click in the browser address bar (or Alt d, yep that works in browsers too), then paste the copied folder address (Ctrl v or rightclick and paste).
6. Then click Go or hit the Enter button in your browser, and the contents of the folder you want are listed in the browser like a webpage.
   
   Firefox
   
   Opera
   
   
   Chrome
   
   
   
7. You can now just print the page as you'd normally do for webpages (menu File -> Print or Ctrl p).

That's it. As you can see it'll even show info on file sizes and date last modified, and you can click the links to open files or folders to navigate round some more.

Interestingly for trivia fans, what they show in the address bar is different - with Fox showing (in my example) file:///K:/My%20Documents/test/, Chrome file:///K:/My%20Documents/test/ and Opera file://localhost/K:/My%20Documents/test.

Tags: listing folders, listing directories, tip, trick, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience