You may find there are times when it’s useful to print a list of the files within a specific folder on your Mac.
It’s a good way to share a catalog of documents, images, clips, or even fonts.
First, place your printer on the dock:
- Go to the black Apple in the top-left hand corner and select System Preferences.
- Choose the Print & Scan tab.
- Click the Open Print Queue button. The Print Queue box will open and the printer icon will show up on the dock.
- Click and hold down the mouse button on the printer icon in the dock. A menu pops up.
- Choose Options and Keep In Dock.
- Close the Print Queue box and close System Preferences.
- The printer icon should remain on the dock.
- You are ready to print the contents of a folder:
- Go to the Finder.
- Select any folder. Click and drag it onto the printer icon in the dock.
- The printer icon bounces and a print dialog box opens with a preview of the folder content list.
- You can print this document or save it as a PDF file.
The printout shows the file name, size and the date and time the file was last opened.
It will also list several files that are not visible to users. This is normal.
If you need to edit the data:
- Save the folder content list as a PDF.
- Double-click the PDF. It opens in Preview.
- Click and drag to select all of the text. Use the shortcut Command C for copy.
- Open TextEdit
- Paste the text into a new TextEdit window. Use the shortcut Command V for paste.
- You can now edit the text and save this document as a txt file or a PDF.
If you have questions, please use the Comments section below.
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Thanks for your tip on how to print a file list from a Mac using printer window. Much appreciated!
And thank you from me too – this is a really helpful tip.
Thanks – Great post, it worked!!!
Cool. Glad I could help. Have a great New Year. – John
Is there any way, we can print number of pages in pdf along the contents of folder ?
Hi Vishu – It can’t be done in Preview. It may be possible in Adobe Acrobat Professional. I would check with Microsoft before paying as it’s not cheap. You could also look online for a plug-in that provides that option in a PDF browser. You mat be lucky and find something. I’ve found a few odd, but useful PDF plug-ins/apps this way. Good luck – John
Hi john, my folder contains a years worth of invoices. Doing this just prints off the list of invoices.
Is there anyway I can print them all off without having to do what I currently do which is open them one by one and select them to print?
It takes me hours!!!
They are .doc if that makes any difference.
Any replies appreciated, al
Hi Alistair – I think this is the answer you’re looking for – Print Multiple Word Documents On A Mac
This is great. Thank you.
Thank you for your instructions, which works fine, except for one small detail. I want to print a long list of books, each listed as a subfolder with the name of the author (surname, first name). In the original folder these are all nicely sorted alphabetically, but in the printed list they come out in what to me look like a random sort. Is there a way to get this folder of folders printed alphabetically as in the original folder list?
Hi Hasse – The only option that I can think of is detailed here – http://osxdaily.com/2012/10/11/save-list-of-files-folder-contents-as-text Good luck. it’s a difficult problem. – John
Cool….. works perfectly. Thank you.
Thanks for a clear and understandable outline and pix to guide a techno-idiot through this process. I had over 500 documents prepared for museum submission and did not want to transfer one document title at a time to create a list to print. What a time saver for me!!
Hi Patricia – Thanks for commenting and letting me know it helped 🙂
The problem I have is getting a list of the contents of the sub-folders within a folder. The above will only print the first level of a folder. I have folders within folders, within folders and so on. I want one list with the contents of all the documents within all the folders under the original folder. Is that possible?
Hi Tom – I don’t have an answer, but i did find this link. Be careful working in Terminal. Good luck. – John
Thanks. Is there a way to get other column data?
I need to get the video duration on 260+ videos. I can show it in Finder list view. How can I get that into a file?
I have no movies, but I have done this for Music.
Go into your video player. (I’m using iTunes). I selected Music out of the Library selector at the top left of the window.
(1) Now, I go to the iTunes File drop down menu and select Print and walk myself through making a PDF of the data. After you make the PDF, you can extract data.
Or, alternatively (2) go to the iTunes File drop down menu, Click on Library > Export Playlist. Choose a file name and you’ll get a tab separated list of all the files. Change the extension of the file to .csv and save it. Then double click on it… it ought to try to open in your spreadsheet program. Then take it from there.
Hi John,
Thanks for this, just what I was looking for, for my archive hard drives.
The PDF doesn’t show the folder sizes for me, only file sizes – is there a setting somewhere to show the folder sizes?
Thanks!
Hi Ross. Try this. 1. Open Finder. 2. In the menu bar select View → as List. 3. In the menu bar, select View → Show View Options. 4. Check the box next to Calculate all sizes. Good luck – John
Hi! Thanks for this tip. The problem I am having is that I want my listing to be alphabetical but this seems to be random.
Go to View in the menu Bar and choose View>Sort By>Name. For this action make sure the option in the View menu to Use Stacks is unchecked. Good luck – John
I had the need to list and manipulate/sort the list of filenames, so I came across the tips on this webpage. However, on a whim, I tried something new: I copied all the files in Finder (using Big Sur OS) and pasted them into a MicroSoft Excel spreadsheet. All the filenames appeared as expected (no truncated words or anything). EASY! I just needed the filenames, so this is perfect, and NOW I can manipulate and sort them however I need to in a spreadsheet or database!
If you just want the titles, copy all the files in Finder (any OS) and paste into a texedit file that is set for plain text.
(New texedit file, Shift Command/T to change from rtf to txt.)
All subfolders that are open to view will be listed – but in simple order, no differentiation among folder and file titles. I make my folder titles in caps, which helps this problem.
This of course works for any folder of finder items.
I forgot to say the same command will change the file back to rtf if you want to format your text.
John, Thanks so much for these instructions. Many, many years ago up until perhaps the mid 2000s, Apple had a menu option to print a directory. It included icons (folders or files so you could tell what was what), and it was so convenient, especially for a backup indexing system (you know, the old-fashioned paper way of filing a print out with CD/DVD backups) and the print out looked exactly like your directory, icons and all. Fairly certain it would not do the subset folders, even if they were open in your directory. Not sure which system upgrade got rid of the print option, but it was the beginning of Apple’s paring down of convenient actions. I lamented for years over this loss and decided it was just something that I would never be able to do again. Gee, it took me all these years to decide to search for a way to print a directory…and I found your instructions. duh. However, just as a post indicated above, very frustrating that the directory won’t print alphabetically but as some kind of random order that is hard to figure out “why”. Guess this is better than nothing. I do realize one can copy the directory and create your own text document. Thanks again!
Hey Rebecca – Thanks for the comment. Nice to know the posts are of help. Have a good weekend. – John
HI – the file list does not appear when I drag the folder to the printer in the dock. All I get is blank, greyed-out form with the printer name.
Hi Leslie – You may not get the intended result depending on the macOS you are using. This post was first published in 2015, so things may still not work the way they once did. Maybe someone else on here has come across this problem and can help with an answer – John
Bloody brilliant – why did it take me years to find this (shame on me 😉 )? But thanks a billion
Excellent tip! Worked great and saved me so much time!