CopyFilenames Overview

What is CopyFilenames?

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

Screengrab of Windows File Explorer right-click context menu showing CopyFilenames commands

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 File 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.

Copying full paths

CopyFilenames also makes it very easy to copy the full path to a file. If you hold down SHIFT while selecting the Copy Filenames command, the full path to the file will be copied instead of just the filename. This path can then be pasted into any application that has a field for a path to a file, or into a file open panel.

This can be a real timesaver when you already have the right folder open in Windows File Explorer, since you do no longer need to navigate to that same folder in another application to use a file in that folder!

Including file attributes

It doesn't just stop there - you can also include the size of the file or the last-modified date instead of just the filename. To select these options, hold down the CTRL key while selecting the Copy Filenames to bring up the options panel. 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 program 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.

Using Windows commands

Select the file to delete
File > Rename
CTRL+C
ESC
File > Delete
Select the other file
File > Rename
CTRL+V
Return.

Using CopyFilenames

Right click the file to delete
Copy Filename and Delete
Right click the other file
Paste Filename

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

Editions

CopyFilenames Pro is an alternative edition of CopyFilenames that has additional features.

Compare CopyFilenames and CopyFilenames Pro