How do I create a catalog of files on my hard drive?

[Guest]

I have a lot of technical papers on my hard drive and would like to create a
database/catalog of them by including keywords, etc. to provide accurate
search results. Ideally, I'd like to keep the files where they are and just
return hyperlinks to the file locations for search results. Any
recommendations on how best to achieve this result? Can this be easily
achieved in Office?

 

[John Vinson]

I have a lot of technical papers on my hard drive and would like to create a
database/catalog of them by including keywords, etc. to provide accurate
search results. Ideally, I'd like to keep the files where they are and just
return hyperlinks to the file locations for search results. Any
recommendations on how best to achieve this result? Can this be easily
achieved in Office?

You can certainly do so in Access; there is a Hyperlink datatype, but
it can actually be simpler just to use a Text field (or, if you have
some path/filenames which exceed 255 bytes, a Memo - though I'd stick
with text if possible!) You can create a hyperlink on the fly.

You can even use VBA code using the Dir() function to populate the
table, though of course there are thousands of files on your computer
which are NOT technical papers: you'ld need to limit by directories
and/or datatype.

John W. Vinson[MVP]