Quickly Print a List of the Files in the Current Directory

This guide addresses adding “Print Directory Listing” to the right-click contextual menu of folders in Windows Explorer in Windows XP. Information for this tip was obtained from Microsoft Knowledgebase articles 321379 and 322756. If you are using Vista and want this functionality, please see this article instead.

Ready? Let's get started.

1. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, Notepad.

2. Paste in the following text:

@echo off

dir %1 /-p /o:gn > "%temp%\Listing"

start /w notepad /p "%temp%\Listing"

del "%temp%\Listing"

exit

3. Click File, Save As, and enter the following text in the Save As field:

%windir%\Printdir.bat

4. Click Save, and then exit Notepad.

5. Click Start, Control Panel, and Folder Options.

6. Click the Files Types tab and wait for the “Registered file types” field to populate.

7. Click “File Folder” to highlight it, and then click the Advanced button.

8. In the Edit File Type dialog, click New.

9. In the Action field, enter

Print Directory Listing

10. In the Application used to perform action field, enter

printdir.bat

11. Click OK twice and then click Close.

This may complete the steps. Let’s find out. Double-click My Computer and your C: drive. Right-click a folder and you should see “Print Directory Listing” in the context menu. Try it out. If a command prompt box pops up followed by the print spool dialog, it worked.

However, there’s one more thing to check. Double-click a folder and see if it opens. If instead, you get a Search Results box as shown below with the folder name you double-clicked shown in the “Look in” field, then you have other actions associated with your file folders. Fixing this will require a Registry edit, but don't worry. As always, we’re here to guide you and will take the cautious approach.

First, let’s back up the Registry by creating a System Restore Point.

1. Click Start, then Run, and enter

%SystemRoot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

2. Click OK.

3. Click “Create a restore point” and click Next.

3. Give your restore point a meaningful name, and then click Next.

4. Click Create and wait while Windows creates the restore point.

5. Click Close.

The Registry was backed up as the restore point was created. Now we’re ready to edit the Registry to fix our problem with double-clicking a folder.

1. Start the Registry editor by clicking Start, Run and entering “regedit”

2. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell

3. With “shell” highlighted, double-click “Default” at top right.

4. Enter “none” in the Value data field.

5. Exit Regedit.

And that’s completes the process.

Try double-clicking a folder again, and it should open to the folder’s contents. Right-click a folder, and you should still have “Print Directory Listing” in the menu.

Thanks for reading this.

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http://www.brighthub.com/computing/windows-platform/articles/8924.aspx

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