Microsoft Excel — ASAP Utilities Add-In — My Top Uses (#3)
#3 — Create a List of Folder(s) Contents with Hyperlinks
The most popular use of ASAP Utilities for most users I work with is generating a linked list of folder properties and files. For some reason, getting a list of folder contents is something that is frequently needed, but there is no easy way to get at it (as far as I know, before ASAP Utilities…).
This list can be generated for as little as one folder or a full network drive (I have done it for a few hundred thousand lines).
In this post, I walk-through generating a file listing on a backup storage drive that I use. In future posts, I will address WHAT we can do with this data once we have it — getting the data is just step 1!
Steps to get your list
- Open Excel and select ASAP Utilities — “ASAP Utilities → Information → 14. Create a list of filenames and properties in a folder…”
- Select directory you want a contents list of (in this case, I am pointing to my Backup external hard drive)
- Here is the default list that ASAP Utilities creates
Once you have this list, there are two additional things I do immediately, which make it much easier to use:
- Format the data list as an Excel data Table (this helps immensely for later use / analysis of this list.
- Next, create hyperlinks for the column that contains the “Folder and Name” — this can then be used to directly OPEN the referred to folder (to create the hyperlinks, HIGHLIGHT the entire column and use ASAP Utilities to create the hyperlinks).
That’s the basics of generating a list. It’s super helpful, but really is only getting started. In future posts, I will discuss developing analysis and capabilities to make this data dump truly useful!
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