Create hudreds of folders named after a list.txt - Script or Automator or ?

#4
The terminal trick worked great! Thanks! A couple notes:

  1. In dirlist.txt, enclose multiple-word folder names in quotes because otherwise the command makes a folder for each word separated by a space. Ex: [“Test 1”] in the text file creates one folder [Test 1] (without brackets). But just [Test 1] in the text file creates two folders, [Test] and [1].
  2. I had to use this trick to make several hundred folders from a list of cell values in an Excel column. The following steps outline how to do this process:
  • If the cell values have multiple words you’ll need an easy way to enclose all the words in quotes. To get quotes around the cell values and a space afterward, create a new column and copy this CONCATENATE function down the new column:
    =CONCATENATE("""",Cell_Reference,""""," ")
  • Where Cell_Reference is the cell with the desired folder name. Due to the way Excel handles quotation marks in its formulas, you need four quotation marks in a row to obtain one quotation mark in the formula result. The above function would return a value of [“Cell_Reference” ] in the forumla cell (without brackets of course, just using to show the space afterward).
  • The next necessary step is to paste the cell values that are currently listed down a column as a row. So copy the range of desired folder names in Excel and from the Edit menu select Paste Special. In the box that opens, select “Values” and check the “Transpose” box, and paste to an empty row. This should line the column values up horizontally. Then copy & paste that row into your plain-text dirlist.txt file and you should be good to run the command.
  1. PS for those not good with Terminal I’ve included a ZIP of a script you can place in the directory where you want the folders to be (make sure the dirlist.txt is there too) – it’ll open your terminal window there.
    OpenTerminalHere.app.zip - 71 KB][/url]