Chapter 8: Managing Files and Folders

Configuring Windows Explorer

You can configure many facets of Explorer windows to your own taste. Some of the basic choices were described in the previous chapter. At the simplest level, you can resize and move the windows themselves just like any other windows. You can choose which Explorer bar (if any) to display by clicking a toolbar button or using the View | Explorer Bar menu. You can display or hide the Standard Buttons, Address Bar, or Links toolbars by using the View | Toolbars menu, and the Status Bar by checking or unchecking View | Status Bar. (If you are wondering what any of these objects are, see the previous chapter.)

You can also make more complex changes in Windows Explorer's behavior, the information it displays, and how that information is presented.

In addition to changing the look and behavior of Windows Explorer in general, you also can add features to individual folders. You can choose a special icon for a folder or select a picture that appears when you look at the folder in Thumbnails view.

Changing the Behavior of Explorer Windows

The Explorer windows of Windows XP are descended from two parents: the folder windows of Windows 95 and the browser windows of Internet Explorer. The default settings of the Explorer windows borrow a little from each parent. If you don't like this compromise, you can change your settings from the Folder Options dialog box, shown in Figure 8-2. To open this dialog box, choose Tools | Folder Options from the menu of Windows Explorer, or open the Control Panel and choose Folder Options from the Appearances and Themes category.

If, after experimenting with new settings, you decide the designers of Windows XP had it right after all, you can return to the Folder Options dialog box and click the Restore Defaults button.

Figure 8-2: The General tab of the Folder Options dialog box, with the default settings

Opening a New Window for Each Folder

The default setting of Windows Explorer is for a window to "navigate" up and down the folder tree, like a Web browser: when you open a subfolder of the currently displayed folder, the contents of the currently displayed folder vanish from the working area and are replaced by the contents of the subfolder. However, you still have the option of choosing the original Windows 95 behavior: the new folder can open in a new window, leaving the old window unchanged. If you do, the Windows Explorer's Forward and Back buttons stop working.

The new behaviors only apply to windows you create by opening folders on the desktop, however, or opening folders displayed in windows that already have this behavior. If you start Windows Explorer by choosing it from the Programs menu, for example, it behaves in the default (that is, the Web browser) way.

Replacing Double Clicks with Single Clicks

Under the default settings, a single mouse click selects a file or folder, and a double click opens it. If all that clicking seems like too much work, you can change the settings so a file or folder is selected when the mouse pointer hovers over it and is opened by a single click, as in Web browsers.

To make the change, choose Tools | Folder Options to open the Folder Options dialog box, shown in Figure 8-2. Then click the Single-Click To Open An Item radio button. To change back, click the Double-Click To Open An Item radio button in the Folder Options dialog box.

Restoring the Folder Tree's Dotted Lines

In earlier versions of Windows, the Folders Explorer bar had dotted lines that connected a folder to its subfolders. In designing the look of Windows XP, Microsoft decided that the Folders Explorer bar was too cluttered for novice users, so it created a new default setting without the dotted lines, which is called the simple folder view.

We think that the dotted lines make it easier to see how the folder tree is structured, so we recommend putting them back into the Folders Explorer bar as follows:

1. Open the Folder Options dialog box by choosing Tools | Folder Options from the menu of any Explorer window.
2. Click the View tab of the Folder Options dialog box.
3. Uncheck the Display Simple Folder View In Explorer's Folders List check box, and then click OK to close the Folder Options dialog box.

Getting Rid of the Task Pane

The Task pane comes in handy now and then, but it also takes up a lot of space. If you display both the Task pane and an Explorer bar, there isn't much room left for the working area.

The simplest way to make the Task pane go away is to shrink the size of the Explorer window. At some point Windows decides on its own that the Task pane is a waste of valuable space and stops displaying it.

To make the Task pane go away for all Explorer windows of all sizes, choose Tools | Options to open the Folder Options dialog box, and then click the Use Windows Classic Folders radio button. To reenable the Task pane, click the Enable Web Content In Folders radio button in the Folder Options dialog box.

Changing the Toolbars

In addition to making the toolbars appear and disappear, as described in the previous chapter, you can rearrange the order of the toolbars and choose which buttons you want to have appear on the Standard Buttons or Links toolbars.

Moving the Toolbars

The menu bar, Standard Button toolbar, Links bar, and Address toolbar can be displayed in any order you like. You may, for example, decide to put the Address toolbar on top of the Standard buttons, or put the menu bar and the Links bar side by side.

Before rearranging the toolbars, you must first unlock them by making sure that View | Toolbars | Lock the Toolbars is unchecked. When the toolbars are unlocked and ready to move, each toolbar has a column of dots on its left edge. When the toolbars are locked the dots vanish.

To move a toolbar, do the following:

1. Move the cursor to the left end of the toolbar, just to the right of the column of dots.
2. Hold down the left mouse button. If you have hit the right spot, the cursor turns into four crossing arrows.
3. Drag the toolbar where you want it to go, and release the mouse button.

If two toolbars are on the same level, you can adjust the amount of space given to each toolbar by dragging and dropping the separator (the vertical line next to the column of dots on the left edge of the rightmost bar) between them. If the Explorer window isn't wide enough to contain all the toolbar elements you put on one level, a &ra;&ra; appears at the right edge. Click it to see a menu of the buttons that have fallen off the edge of the window.

Configuring the Standard Buttons Toolbar

The six Standard Buttons discussed in the previous chapter are not the only ones you could have on your toolbar. In fact, you can choose from a total of 21 buttons, and you can display any collection of them in any order you want. This rearranging takes place in the Customize Toolbar dialog box, shown in Figure 8-3. To open this dialog box, select View | Toolbars | Customize, or right-click the toolbar itself and choose Customize from the shortcut menu.

Figure 8-3: Clicking Add puts a Stop button between Forward and Up.

The Customize Toolbar dialog box is well designed. The buttons you are currently displaying are listed in the Current Toolbar Buttons (right-hand) window, and the ones you are not displaying are in the Available Toolbar Buttons (left-hand) window. To add a button, select it in the left-hand window and click the Add button. To remove a button, select it in the right-hand window and click the Remove button.

You can change the order of the buttons you display as follows: select a button in the right-hand window, and then click the Move Up or Move Down buttons. The top-to-bottom order of the buttons in the Current Toolbar Buttons window is the left-to-right order of the buttons on the Standard Buttons toolbar. Group buttons together by inserting a separator. You can have as many separators on your toolbar as you like; the separator is the only item in the left-hand window that doesn't vanish when you move it to the right-hand window.

The amount of space the buttons take up on the toolbar is determined by the size of the button's icon and the text label. You can change either of these with the two drop-down lists at the bottom of the Customize Toolbar dialog box. The combination No Text Labels and Small Icons enables you to put a lot of small buttons on the toolbar, while Show Text Labels/Large Icons gives you a few big buttons.

The default settings are Selective Text on Right and Large Icons. The "selective text" labels enough buttons that you can probably guess the rest. For example, labeling the Back button gives you enough information to figure out where the Forward button is.

Configuring the Links Toolbar

The Windows Explorer Links toolbar contains buttons that can link to the Web sites or files or programs that you use most often. However, to get much use out of the Links toolbar you'll need to customize it, because the Links that Microsoft puts on the toolbar for you aren't very interesting.

To eliminate a link button, right-click it and choose Delete from the shortcut menu. To add a new link button of your own choosing, drag any file or folder icon to the Links toolbar and drop it where you want it. The file or folder stays where it was originally, and a shortcut is put on the Links toolbar (and in the folder C:\Windows\Favorites\Links, assuming that Windows is installed in C:\Windows). If you want to add the currently selected file or folder to the Links toolbar, you can drag the file or folder icon out of the Address box and drop it on the Links toolbar in the place where you want it to be.

To rename a link button, right-click it and choose Rename from the shortcut menu.

The contents of the Links toolbar also appear in the Links folder of the Favorites menu, so you can also customize the Links toolbar via the Organize Favorites dialog box.

Changing Views

Windows Explorer can display file and folder icons in the working area in five different views: Tiles, Icons, List, Details, and Thumbnails. You can find all these options on the View menu. Folders that have been assigned special folder templates may have additional view options.

Tiles and Icons are graphical views that enable you to arrange the icons in any two-dimensional pattern you like. List and Details both put the objects into a list. Details view includes more information in its list and enables you to reorder the list according to various criteria. Thumbnails view displays a tiny picture of each image or HTML file.

Tiles and Icons Views

Tiles view and Icons view are both graphical ways of presenting the contents of a folder--you can drag-and-drop the files and folders in the window in any way that makes sense to you, just as you might arrange objects on a desktop, piling up some and spreading out others.

Icons is the more compact view, Tiles the more informative. In Icons view the icons are smaller, text labels are under the file and folder icons, and no additional information is listed beyond the file names and icons. Tiles view gives you larger icons than Icons, text labels are to the right of the icons, and the types and sizes of files are given in the text labels.

List and Details Views

List and Details views each are ways of putting the contents of a folder into a list. The difference between them is List gives only a small icon and a name for each file and subfolder. Details, as the name implies, gives a more detailed list that includes three more columns: the size of the file, its file type, and when it was last modified (see Figure 8-4). (The column headings are sometimes different for special folders. For example, columns in My Computer are Name, Type, Total Size, and Free Space.)

Figure 8-4: In Details view, you can sort by clicking any column head.

If you think Details view would be more informative if it had a different set of columns, right-click the bar that displays the column headings. The shortcut menu displays a list of possible column headings, with the currently displayed ones checked. Check or uncheck any you like. (Many of the headings are only appropriate for special types of files or folders; for other files or folders the corresponding column is empty.) The changes you make apply to the current folder only, but will be remembered the next time you open that folder. You can also change Details view for all folders.

Details view also enables you to sort the list of files and subfolders according to any column by clicking its column head. Clicking Name sorts the contents, putting them in alphabetical order. Clicking a column head twice sorts the contents in reverse order. For example, clicking the Size head once sorts from the smallest file to the largest, and clicking Size twice re-sorts from the largest file to the smallest. In Figure 8-4, clicking the column head Modified twice has sorted the contents of the folder by the date modified, from most recent to least recent. The small down arrow next to the Modified column head indicates that the list is sorted in descending order based on this column.

Figure 8-5: Thumbnails view uses miniature pictures to represent image files.

You can adjust the width of the columns in a Details view by dragging and dropping the lines between the adjacent column heads. You can switch the order of the columns by dragging and dropping the column heads.

Thumbnails View

If a file icon is a little picture that is supposed to tell you something about the file, and if the file itself contains a picture, then why not let a miniature version of the picture be the file icon? That's the idea behind Thumbnails view, shown in Figure 8-5. Graphics files and HTML files are denoted by miniatures of themselves, some files have been assigned special pictures, and all other files are denoted by squares surrounding their usual file icons. If the HTML documents are text, their thumbnails are too small to read, but at least you can tell whether this is the two-column document or the one-column document.

Other Views

Folders that have been assigned a special folder template may have other view options. For example, a folder with the photo album template has a Filmstrip view, which you can select from the View menu as you would any other view.

Changing How the View Settings Work

By default, each folder has its own view settings. If you choose a new view from the View menu, you change the view for the currently displayed folder only. Windows remembers the new view the next time you open that folder, but all other folders are unchanged. But another method enables you to change the view for all folders in one fell swoop.

Defining One View for All Folders

If you decide you like Details or Thumbnails (or some other) view and want to use it for all your folders, you can. Here's how:

1. Configure a folder the way you want all the folders to appear.
2. With that folder open, select Tools | Folder Options. The Folder Options dialog box appears (shown in Figure 8-2).
3. Click the View tab of the Folder Options dialog box. Near the top of this tab is the Folder Views box. Inside this box is the Apply To All Folders button. Click it.
4. A confirmation box appears, asking you whether you really mean to change the default view settings. Click Yes.
5. Click OK to close the Folder Options dialog box.

If you want to reset all folders back to the default settings, follow the previous instructions, except in step 4, click the Reset All Folders button.

Changes that you make to the layout of columns in Details view can't be extended to all folders by this technique.

Defining a View that Stays with a Window

You may also decide you want the view settings to belong to the window, not to the folder. In other words, when you switch to, say, Thumbnails view, you want every folder you open from that window to come up in Thumbnails view until you change to something else. To change window settings:

1. Select Tools | Folder Options in Windows Explorer. The Folder Options dialog box appears (shown in Figure 8-2).
2. Click the View tab of the Folder Options dialog box. The lower portion of the tab is the Advanced Settings box.
3. In the Advanced Settings box, find the line Remember Each Folder's View Settings. Uncheck the box next to this line.
4. Click OK.

To restore the default behavior, repeat the process, but check the box in step 3.

One thing you can't do is have Windows Explorer behave in different ways for different folders,such as open with a single click in one folder and open with a double click in another. Whatever decisions you make on the General tab of the Folder Options dialog box are applied automatically to all Explorer windows.

Changing View Settings

The stray odds and ends of how Explorer windows look and behave are controlled from the View tab of the Folder Options dialog box. From this tab you can tell Windows

• Whether to display hidden files.
• Whether to display file extensions. (If you would rather see file extensions, see the section "What Are Extensions and File Types?" in Chapter 7 for how to display them.)

You can make your experience of Windows Explorer a little more comfortable by setting its options the way you like them. To open the View tab of the Folder Options dialog box, choose Tools | Folder Options from the Windows Explorer menu bar, and then click the View tab. The View tab contains the Advanced Settings window, which is a long list of check boxes, most of which are self-explanatory. For example, the Show My Documents On The Desktop check box controls whether the My Documents folder appears on the desktop.

If you decide that whatever you changed on the View tab was a bad idea, but you can't remember exactly what you changed, go to the View tab and click the Restore Defaults button.

Sorting and Arranging the Contents of a Folder

Windows Explorer can sort the icons in an Explorer window automatically according to any column that appears in Details view. For most folders this means the icons can be sorted by name (alphabetically), by file type, by size (from smallest to largest), and by date (earliest to most recent). Even if you aren't in Details view, you can access the same choices via a shortcut menu or on the View | Arrange Icons menu. Adding a column to Details view adds the same choice to the View | Arrange Icons menu.

In any of these sortings, folders are listed before files. Thus, in Figure 8-6, the B Folder and the C Folder come before the A File. In Tiles, Icons, and Thumbnails views, the contents of the folder are sorted in rows (if the window is wide enough for more than one column). The first element in the order is located in the window's upper-left corner, the second is to its right, and so on. In List and Details views, the contents are sorted in a list, starting at the top of the window.

Figure 8-6: A folder's contents sorted by name

In Details view, sorting is particularly easy: click the column header to sort according to that column. Click it again to sort in reverse order (in which folders automatically go to the end of the list). The column by which the list is sorted displays a small arrowhead, which points up for a sort in ascending order and down for a sort in descending order.

In Tiles, Icons, or Thumbnails views, you can also arrange icons manually, by dragging them. Figure 8-7 shows a folder whose contents have been arranged manually--notice the irregular spacing and the overlapping icons. Metaphorically, manual arrangement is more like sorting stacks of paper on a table than sorting items in a filing cabinet. The effect can be similar to having subfolders: you can put work files on the right half of the window and home files on the left, instead of having Work and Home subfolders. If you decide you want tidy rows and columns again, select something off the View | Arrange Icons By menu.

If you overlap an icon too closely with a folder icon, Windows will think you want to put the corresponding object inside the folder.

Figure 8-7: A folder's icons arranged manually

You can also group files and folders automatically according to name, size, type, or date modified. Make sure that View | Arrange Icons By | Show In Groups is checked. Then choose Name, Size, Type, or Modified from the View | Arrange Icons By menu.