Directory contents into a spreadsheet entry I would like to turn the contents of a folder into entries for Numbers (or Excel) - is there a way to automate doing this?
You can use Automator.app to create a service in finder.

Open Automator.


Create a new service documents
set the the service receives selected Folders in Finder
Add a Get folder contents Action.
Add a Get Run Applescript Action.
replace the applescript content with the applescript below.


.

on run {input, parameters}
    set theCsv to ""
    repeat with i from 1 to number of items in input
        tell application "Finder" to set this_item to displayed name of item i of input
        set this_item to this_item &amp; ",\\n"
        set theCsv to theCsv &amp; this_item
    end repeat
    do shell script "echo " &amp; quoted form of theCsv &amp; " &gt; ~/Desktop/names.csv"
end run





save the document


Now when you select a folder in finder you can use the contextual menu to run the service on the folder.

It will create a .csv file on your desktop of the list. Which will open in Numbers.

Note: if you have more than one folder it will create a single list for both.
It is possible to have it only work on the first folder or both individually



UPDATE:

A quick applescript example to work on multiple folders in selection.
This will create a individual file for each directory in the finder selection

    on run {input, parameters}
        set theCsv to ""

        set pathList to {}
        repeat with i from 1 to number of items in input
            tell application "Finder" to set the Cpath to container of item i of input as alias
            if (Cpath as alias) is not in pathList then
                copy Cpath to end of pathList
            end if
        end repeat


        repeat with a from 1 to number of items in pathList
set this_item to item a of pathList
    set thisFileName to ""
        tell application "Finder" to set thisFileName to displayed name of (this_item as alias)

            set the CSVpath to ""
            repeat with i from 1 to number of items in input

                tell application "Finder"
                    set the Cpath to container of item i of input as alias

                    if container of item i of input as alias is this_item then
                        set theName to displayed name of item i of input &amp; ",\\n"
                        set CSVpath to CSVpath &amp; theName

                    end if
                end tell
            end repeat

     do shell script "echo " &amp; quoted form of CSVpath &amp; " &gt; ~/Desktop/" &amp; quoted form of thisFileName &amp;  ".csv"
        end repeat


    end run


UPDATE 2.
This second example now uses the folder name as the name for the file