Write console text to a file (Windows cmd.exe)

plasmid — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:53:50 +0000

Writing directly from the Windows command line to a file might not be something you need to do very often. The famous black and white console is better suited to serving system commands and file operations than being a stand-in for notepad. However, it is sometimes useful to have the option of writing multiple lines of text to a file directly from the trusty prompt.

Method One

This is suitable for creating/overwriting a file with multiple lines of text.

copy con SOME_FILE.txt Type your text here You can even have multiple lines!

When finished, press CTRL+Z to confirm your action (or CTRL+C to cancel) and ENTER.

If you want to append some text instead of overwriting it completely, follow as above but using:

copy SOME_FILE.txt + con

Method Two

Open up the command prompt and type:

echo SOME TEXT > SOME_FILE.txt

This method creates/overwrites SOME_FILE.txt with the text you entered before the >. It is only suitable for entering a single line of text into a file.

As with method one, it possible to append text using >> instead of > in the command.

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Write console text to a file (Windows cmd.exe)