Question

Say you have a program that gives a lot of output. It seems that Command Prompt unfortunately doesn't keep all of it (there's only so far you can scroll up). Is there a way to keep all of it?

Answer 1

Increasing the buffer size is the best way if you just want to scroll up and see the output, which you can configure in properties.

If you are appending to a file, you'll also probably want the errors in case there are any:

C:\>somecommand.exe > "C:\path\to\output.txt" 2>&1

If you want a pager, there is more or less for Windows.

example:

C:\>somecommand.exe | less

you can then use f to page forward or b to go backward.

Answer 2

Are you using Windows XP if so you could append to your command | more

Alternatively you could use

command redirection operators

.
This page has more info for you.

Answer 3

Output the results to a file, like this:

C:> RunMyProgram.exe > outputfile.txt

Answer 4

you can increase the buffer size on command history (defaults to 50) on properties. you could try to something like 500 or even 5000, than you should be able to scroll up a lot more.

another way is to redirect the output to a file using the ">" char:

ex:

C:> someCommand > output.txt

than open the txt file and you should see the output for the command there.

Answer 5

To just capture output to a file, see other answers. You can also increase the amount to text you can scroll back and see up to a limit.

With the command prompt window open, click the [C:] icon in the title bar to bring up the menu and select properties. Under the Layout tab, change the Screen Buffer Size->Height to 9999. That will allow you to scroll back that many lines in the window.