File inventory Software / Program

[2dt Drifter]

I work for a architectural firm that has a deadline coming up. Our drawing package is over 450 sheets, per our client, the package will need an electronic version of individual PDF files.
I now have a directory with all of these sheets and I need to check the file names against an excel list. I have scoured the internet for something to use but have come up short. My programming experience is one semester in college so that's pretty much useless.

Is there a way I can find a script, macro, program that can check the file directory of PDF's against the excel list? They are not in any particular order which is not any more fun...

any suggestions are open!

 

[slackwarelinux]

If you are running Linux...

cd (directory with pdfs)
ls *.pdf | sort > pdf_files

then I'd make a file with the names of each pdf on one line, called excel_files or something. this could either be copypastaed from the excel worksheet or parsed from a comma separated version of the spreadsheet.

sort excel_files > sorted_excel_files
diff pdf_files sorted_excel_files

but I'm guessing you aren't using Linux :/

 

[2dt Drifter]

nope, not running linux.. wish i was though.

congrats on hitting 500 posts btw

 

[aceO07]

You can sort your excel sheet by file name.. then compare to a sorted file listing from your directory visually. If they're both sorted, it helps a lot.

You could also export the excel to be tab delimited. Create a java program to read the file in, get directory listing and compare. It shouldn't be too hard if you're up for a challenge. All the sample code to open file, read, get file list, etc should exist on the web.

You could also export the sorted excel sheet, get the file list and then use a windows diff program to compare.

There more way to solve this, but I hope you find the quickest and easiest one that fits your needs.

 

[Daishiki]

This might be roundabout, but I would use WinDirStat to analyze the directory and use Report>Send Mail to Owner... function to bring up a list of the directory path and all of its files. However, the text report will show the full path for each file, but you could use some a formula in Excel to strip the path.

 

[2dt Drifter]

Well it took me about two hours to go through, I ended up printing off the excel list for reference and as I went through the printout I would drag and drop the corresponding file into a new folder. slowly whittled away at the massive list that took me a little over two hours.

Daishiki, this task has gotten me sucked into formatting excel, I have several formulas set up now to take the path and .pdf away from the string. So using 5 columns I've created the list to break everything down to outputting "Good" or "Bad" if the file names match. I think the only changing variable would be the path from WinDirStat and a little alphabetical sorting. Thanks for the recommendations guys.