CopyFilenames - Copy filenames to the Windows clipboard

CopyFilenames Overview

What is CopyFilenames?

CopyFilenames is an extension for Windows Explorer. It cannot be run as a standalone application. After installing CopyFilenames, right click on one or more files or folders in Windows Explorer and you will see the extra commands added by CopyFilenames.

What's it for?

Windows has no built in way to copy a filename or folder listing to the clipboard. For a single file, you can use File > Rename, CTRL+C, then ESC to copy a filename to the clipboard, but this is quite tedious if you have to do this frequently or for lots of files.

CopyFilenames comes to the rescue! This adds an extra menu command to the context menu in Windows Explorer (this is the menu that pops up when you right click on a file). This command lets you copy the filename in one operation.

CopyFilenames can also be used to copy lots of filenames all in one go. By default, the filenames will be copied one per line.

When any folders are selected, you have the option to copy the names of all the files in the folders instead of the names of the folders, to whatever depth you want.

Including file attributes

It doesn't just stop there - you can also include the size of the file, the last-modified date, or have the full path to the file instead of just the filename. If you have selected the option to copy the full path, you can also select to have the backslashes doubled up (programmers will appreciate the value of this), or use forward slashes instead. There is also an option to include either single or double quotes around the names.

These additional attributes are tab separated from the filename, so they can, for example, be easily pasted into a spreadsheet pogram such as Excel so that the filenames will be in one column and the sizes in the next.

Replacing one file with another

In addition to being able to copy filenames, this utility also adds two other commands which appear when appropriate. These commands can be used to replace one file with another. This is invaluable in the situation where you have two files in a folder, and you want to delete one, and rename the other to the name of the file that was deleted.

All CopyFilenames commands work equally well with folders as well as files.

CopyFilenames features

• Copies one or many file or folder names as text to the Windows clipboard
• Option to add file size
• Option to add file date/time
• Option to add full path to file
• Option to double up back-slashes, or use forward slashes, if full path added
• Option to quote filenames with single or double quotes
• Option to separate multiple filenames with newline, space, tab or comma
• Command to rename a file with text from clipboard (Paste Filename)
• Command to copy filename and delete file in a single operation