Join files into a single file, as a consolidated text file

It may happen that doing some work in the office, we need to work on many text files, opening one by one to perform a surely repetitive task. It may actually be to merge files into one, as a single consolidated text file.

In this article I will detail a tip in Windows, which will allow us to join all the text files present in the same folder, in a single text file. Once we have a single file, it is easier to make search operations or export to Excel, reducing the time we spend on a tedious task like this.

If for example we have many files with extension .csv in the folder «C:\temp», and we want that all these files are united in only one called «Total.csv»; we carry out the following procedure:

Command console execution

1. Click on the Windows Start button.

2. Immediately type «cmd».

3. Then the command window opens:

Use of copy command

4.There we wrote the following lines:

 C:
 cd "C:\temp"
 copy /b *.csv TOTAL.csv

Once all the data is in the TOTAL.csv file, you can operate on it more easily for subsequent operations.

This option of joining files into one is very useful when we have several documents in which we have to search for information, and it is better to join them together to perform a single search, rather than having to open file by file to search individually.

There are several utilities that we can use from the Windows operating system, that we can use as simple applications in the form of executables in batch, that we can use for different activities that we handle in the office. Knowing these facilities allows us to greatly improve performance when dealing with repetitive tasks, because we reduce time, and avoid human errors, caused by tedium and continuous repetition.

This article is part of the knowledge difusion system of ITSoftware SAS.

ITSoftware SAS is a company dedicated to innovate in the development of web and mobile applications, aimed at improving the performance of business processes.

We support you to build the solutions you need for your current business or your venture. Come and contact us at www.itsoftware.com.co

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