How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player

If you ever want to print off a list of the songs you have in Windows Media Player, you can do so by dragging your library's contents into a playlist and then opening the playlist in Notepad. You can then translate the document into...

Part 1 of 2:

Using a Simple Text Editor

How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 1
Open Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player is included as a standard app on any Windows computer.
1. Type "WMP" into the taskbar search field to find Windows Media Player.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 2

Click the "Play" tab. This is in the upper right-hand corner of your screen, next to the "Burn" and "Sync" options. The "Play" tab is where you'll assemble your playlist.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 3

Click "Music" in the options tree. This is on the left side of the screen.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 4

Select a song, then hold down Ctrl and tap A. This will select your entire library.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 5

Click and drag your selected songs into the "Play" pane. This will add your library to your new playlist.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 6

Click the "Save List" option. This is in the top left corner of your playlist's window. Clicking "Save List" will prompt you to enter a name for your playlist.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 7

Enter a name for your playlist. When you're done, press ↵ Enter to save the playlist. It should appear under the "Playlists" section in the options tree.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 8

Click the "Playlists" option. This will open your Playlists folder; you should see your new playlist in here.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 9

Right-click your playlist and select "Open file location". This will take you to the folder in which the playlist's data file is saved.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 10
Open the "Notepad" app. Notepad is a basic text editor found in the "Desktop Apps" folder; you can find it by typing "Notepad" into the search field in the taskbar.
1. You can also open the Start menu, click "All Apps", and navigate to "Windows Accessories". Notepad is in the Windows Accessories folder.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 11
Click and drag your playlist file from its folder. You'll need to drop the file inside Notepad's editing interface.^{[1] X Research source}
1. Snapping Notepad to one side of the screen and the playlist folder to the other is the easiest way to do this.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 12

Drop the file in Notepad. You should see a long column of text appear. Notepad saves your songs in directory format, meaning that your music tags will look something like "destination folderMusic[Artist Name][Album][Song Name]".
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 13

Save your file. You can do this by clicking "File" in the top left corner of Notepad, clicking "Save As", naming your file, and clicking "OK". You have successfully saved a list of your songs!

Part 2 of 2:

Cleaning Up Your List with Find and Replace

How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 14

Copy the contents of your Notepad document. The easiest way to do this is by holding down Ctrl and tapping A to select everything in Notepad, then holding down Ctrl and tapping C.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 15
Open a new Microsoft Word document. If you don't have MS Word installed on your computer, you can use Google Docs' free version of Word.
1. Depending on your version of Word, you may have to click "Blank Document" to open a new document.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 16

Paste your Notepad contents into Word. Do this by holding down Ctrl, then tapping V.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 17

Familiarize yourself with MS Word's "Find and Replace" feature. Holding down Ctrl and tapping H will activate this feature; you can then add text you wish to find to the "Find what" field and add the replacement text to the "Replace with" field. You can use this feature to remove the HTML tags from your song list, making it much easier to read.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 18

Copy the media tags and destination folder information. To do this, highlight the "Ctrl + C. Make sure you highlight the line all the way up to and including the "" before an artist's name.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 19

Open the "Find and Replace" feature. Make sure your mouse cursor is set at the beginning of your document to ensure that the Find and Replace feature formats your entire document.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 20

Paste the media tag into the "Find" field. You can just add a space (Space) to the "Replace" field.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 21
Click "Replace All". If Word asks you for permission to search from the beginning of the document, click "Yes".
1. You'll need to repeat this process a few times if your sections of your music are in separate directories.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 22
Delete the file tags. File tags you'll see are .mp3, .mp4, .wav, and so on; these are at the end of your directory lines. Delete them by copying and pasting the ".[file type]"/>" text from the end of a directory line into the "Find" field and placing a space in the "Replace" field of Find and Replace.
1. You'll need to repeat this process a few times if your files aren't all in one format.
2. You should also consider replacing the "" separations with a double space. Doing so will separate your artist names, albums, and song names into distinct columns.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 23

Delete the HTML text at the beginning and end of your list. You'll see a set of HTML tags before the first artist's name appears at the beginning of the article; similarly, there is a set of HTML tags at the end. Select these and tap Delete to get rid of them. These should be the last chunks of non-plaintext writing.
How to Save a Printable List of Your Songs in Windows Media Player Picture 24

Review your list. Now you can print your library list in a readable format!

notepad file click playlist

Lesley Montoya

Update 24 March 2020

You should read it

Maybe you are interested