You can use the following syntax in PowerShell to list all files in a directory in order by last accessed date:
ls | sort LastAccessTime -Descending
This particular example will list out all file names in the current directory in order by last accessed date.
Note: The most recently accessed file will appear first in the list of file names.
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: How to List Files in Directory by Date Using PowerShell
Suppose that our current directory has the following path:
- C:\Users\bobbi\OneDrive\Documents\test_data
We can type Dir to list out all files in this current directory:
By default, the files are currently listed in alphabetical order from A to Z.
Suppose that we we would instead like to list out all file names based on their last accessed date.
We can use the following syntax to do so:
ls | sort LastAccessTime -Descending
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
We can see that the files are now listed in order based on when they were last accessed.
We can see that new_data.txt was accessed most recently, then that_data.txt, then cool_data.xlsx, and so on.
If you have a huge number of files in one directory and you only want to view the n most recently accessed files, then you can use the -First operator.
For example, we can use the following syntax to list only the three most recently accessed files:
ls | sort LastAccessTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 3
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
We can see that only the three most recently accessed files are listed in order.
Note: Feel free to change the numeric value after the -First operator to display as many files as you’d like.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PowerShell:
PowerShell: How to Delete All Files with Specific Extension
PowerShell: How to Rename File Extension of Multiple Files
PowerShell: How to List All Files in Directory to Text File
