Combine or merge multiple text files using TXTCollector

Posted on October 1, 2008 at 5:39 am

Recently I wrote about a program called PowerPoint Joiner that combines multiple Powerpoint files into one, quite useful when working in groups and each individual creates a separate file for their part. Merging the files together manually can be a royal pain, especially if you have many files.

You may also come across the need to merge multiple text files into one larger text file. For example, you may receive a CD that contains hundreds of text files, all in different directories, which you need to combine into one file for importing into Excel, etc.

It’s also useful if you have network log files, server log files, or backup logs that you want to combine for purposes of data mining or data warehousing. Read here if you ever come across the need to split a large file into smaller pieces. 

TXTCollector is a free text file merging tool with a good number of features. It’s very easy to use and can be configured to work in many different ways.

combine text files

First, type or copy and paste the folder path into the Folder box at the top. Or simply click on Browse Folders and pick the folder. You can then choose which type of files you want to combine together.

By default, TXTCollector will search for all TXT files and combine them, however, you can pick from the list and combine or merge multiple CSV, HTM, LOG, XML, INI, etc files into one also!

Check the Include subfolders box if you want TXTCollector to recursively look into each sub-folder of the main folder. TXTCollector will show you exactly how many files it found in the directory.

merge txt files

Next you can choose the separator that will appear between each file that is being combined. You can either pick from the drop down menu or you can just type in whatever you want into the box.

By default, the program will put the directory name, file name, and the separator between each file. If you want to combine the files continuously without any break between each file, check off No Separator, No Filename, and No Carriage Returns.

combine multiple txt files

You will then have the choice of adding a space character between the files or not. The cool thing about TXTCollector is that you can really customize it. If you click on the link at the bottom called Extensions and Separators, you can add your own extensions to TXTcollector.

Edit the extensions.txt file located in the TXTcollector application data directory. Note that TXTcollector only handles plain text files, no matter what extension is used. So it cannot combine multiple XLS files, etc unless they are saved as plain text.

The only limitation to the program is that it can only combine 32,765 text files at once. If you have more than that, you can combine that many into one and then combine the large one with more smaller ones, up to 32,765! Possible if you have a ton of log files that you want to combine.

Overall, a very simple, yet powerful and handy little freeware app for combing multiple files. Any other program you like to use? If so, post a comment! Enjoy!

» Filed Under Free Software Downloads

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Comments

8 Responses to “Combine or merge multiple text files using TXTCollector”

  1. P H O E N I X said on : December 14th, 2008 at 10:03 pm

    Hi ,

    Can anybody help to merge some 30 lakh text files.. Txt collector is good, but has a limitation of 32765 files


  2. akishore said on : December 14th, 2008 at 11:58 pm

    How many text files do you need to combine? I believe 1 lakh is 100,000 right? So you need to combine 3,000,000 text files? Wow. I think you’ll have to find something other than TXTCollector for that! Sorry!


  3. Raj said on : June 30th, 2009 at 1:19 am

    Hi,

    I need each filename as a header row for every field when combining the text files. Basically I want to know each field belongs to which file in the final output. Kindly solve my problem


  4. Albatros said on : January 11th, 2010 at 7:24 pm

    @Raj:
    If you want to write the filename infront of each text file, you can use the so called Text Converter. You can download it here:

    http://www.sttmedia.com/textconverter

    With this tool you can also combine text files, you can split them or do other things with them like replacing texts in multiple files.


  5. Sal said on : March 4th, 2010 at 12:53 pm

    I have a similar issue to Raj. When the text files are combined, I want to include the name of the text file right before it appends the contents of that text file. Is there a way to do that with this program?


  6. Raphael said on : April 8th, 2010 at 3:07 am

    This software is really cool! I have to merge about 50 CSV files and am looking forward to it!


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