Posted by : Anonymous on Sep 02, 2007 - 11:20 AM Windows Vista

Whatever you use your computer for – from creating the occasional text document to organising a vast music or digital photography collection – many of the tasks performed in Windows involve working with folders.

It’s possible to make folders do what you want, using the Folder Options Control Panel; it will help speed up common tasks and make everything easier.

In this feature, we are going to reveal how to change the way Windows folders look and behave. We’ll also show you how to personalise them to function in the way that suits you best.

Magic folders
Folders are such an integral part of Windows and the organisation of files that it is essential to configure them to your needs. Using the Control Panel you can make changes and customisations easily.

The bulk of these settings can be accessed in a couple of ways: the first option is to open the Control Panel from the Start menu. You will find the Folder Options icon under the Appearance and Themes section if working in Category View, or as a standard icon when in Classic View.

Alternatively, open up any folder, such as My Documents, and select Folder Options from the Tools menu. By moving to the View tab, it is possible to access a huge number of settings that can be customised to your tastes. One of the first settings that can be changed relates to pop-up tips – or Tooltips.

When holding the mouse cursor over a folder, Windows will display a pop-up listing the overall size of the folder as well as the names of any subfolders it contains, along with the first few filenames. While this information can be useful, it can also prove a distraction. Prevent the pop-ups from appearing by unticking the box labelled ‘Display file size information in folder tips’.

When navigating through folders using Windows Explorer, as soon as a folder is clicked in the tree structure to the left of the screen, it is automatically expanded so that any subfolders are also displayed.

While this is sometimes useful, it can also make it difficult to copy between folders. This feature can be disabled by unticking the box labelled ‘Display simple folder view’ in Explorer’s Folder list.

As a safety measure, Window XP hides certain files and folders that are important to the running of your computer – such as folders containing vital system files and those that have been assigned the ‘hidden’ attribute – to prevent them from being deleted. While this is generally a good idea, it can be frustrating if access is needed to a particular folder.

To ensure all files and folders are visible at all times, tick the box labelled ‘Display the contents of system folders’, select the option labelled ‘Show hidden files and folders’, and untick the box labelled ‘Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)’. After clicking apply, nothing will be hidden from view.

Familiarity breeds contempt
Another irritation rears its head if you frequently work with files that are stored in a particular folder – every time Windows starts up it is necessary to navigate to this folder to access your files.

To save having to do this all the time, tick the box labelled ‘Restore previous folder windows at logon’. The next time you shut down Windows, do not close the folder you are working with. When you restart it will be automatically opened and ready for use.

To make it easier to identify different file types, Windows uses different icons to represent files. Although this system generally works well, when working with icons it can be difficult to differentiate between, for example, different image formats.

To get around this, it can be helpful to force Windows to display a file’s extension. To do so, simply untick the box labelled ‘Hide extension for known file types’. This has an added security benefit, as many viruses hide their extension safe in the knowledge that most people won’t check. If you receive, say, a photo by email and it has the extension .exe then you should not open it.

A personal view
Having assigned a particular view to a folder – details of which can be found below – you may well decide that all folders should use the same settings. Rather than having to configure each one manually, click the Apply To All Folders button. Should you ever need to revert to the original folder settings, simply click the Reset All Folders button instead.

The My Documents folder is the natural home for a huge variety of files, but to help keep things organised it makes sense to create a number of subfolders within it. When working with a large number of folders, even if they have been named appropriately, it can be difficult to identify them.

One way to get around this problem is to assign a picture to the folder, which will be used only when working in Thumbnail view (open a window, go to the View menu and select Thumbnails). Most folders can be customised in this way, with the exception of key system folders such as My Documents, My Music and My Pictures.

Right-click a folder, select Properties from the menu that appears, then move to the Customize tab. Click the Choose Picture button and then navigate through your folder to select the image you would like to use.

To make a folder stand out when using a view other than Thumbnails, there is also the option of changing its icon. Click the Change Icon button and a collection of standard Windows icons will be displayed. Click one then on OK to change it.

While the Folder Properties dialogue box is open at the Customize tab, it is also possible to customise a folder based on the types of file it contains. From the drop-down menu labelled ‘Use this folder type as a template’, indicate the type of files that will be stored in the folder and, if you like, the same properties to be applied to any subfolders that are created. Tick the box labelled ‘Also apply this template to all subfolders’. The template that is chosen not only determines the way in which folders are displayed, but also which options are listed in the Common Tasks pane to the left of the window.

While Common Tasks can prove useful, it is not to everyone’s liking, if only because it takes up valuable screen space. To disable the pane, open Folder Options and select the option labelled ‘Use Windows classic folders’ on the General tab. Just as it is possible to use more than one window or tab in a web browser to do different things, it is also possible to use more than one folder window.

If files need to be copied or moved from one folder to another, the job is easier if both folders are visible at the same time. For example, should a file need to be copied from one subfolder of My Documents to another subfolder, navigating to the first folder before opening another Explorer window, then navigating to the second can be time-consuming. To save time, select the option labelled ‘Open each folder in its own window’ on the General tab.
Time is on your side
Another handy time-saver can be accessed from the General tab of the Folder Options Control Panel. Select the option labelled ‘Single-click to open an item’ and folders can then be opened with a single-click. When working in this mode, files and folders can be selected by hovering the mouse cursor over the item in question.

With all this talk of the Control Panel and the options that can be accessed through it, it is easy to forget about the changes that can be made to folders through folders themselves.

To the left of a folder window it is possible to display a number of panes. We have already talked about the Common Tasks pane, but by clicking the Folders button in the toolbar, an Explorer-style navigation structure is displayed, which makes it easier to move between folders. Alternatively, to make it easier to find a file, it can be useful to have access to a search facility. This can be accessed by clicking the Search button.

To return to the Common Tasks pane, or to display nothing if you prefer, simply click the Folders or Search button for a second time. Additional panes can be accessed via the View menu and by making a selection from the Explorer Bar submenu.

It is also possible to change the way icons are displayed by making a selection from the View menu, or clicking the Views button in the toolbar. When working in Details view, the information columns displayed can be customised as required. Just select Choose Details from the View menu and tick the boxes next to the columns that should be displayed. Use the Move Up-and-Down buttons to change their order.

When selecting a number of files and folders, it can be useful to know how much space the selected items take up on the hard disk. This information can be placed in the status bar at the bottom of the folder window. To make this visible, click the View menu and tick the Status Bar option. With files selected, there are a number of tasks that are performed – such as deleting, copying and pasting – and easy access buttons to these options can be added to the toolbar. Right-click anywhere on the toolbar, select the Customize option, and use the dialogue box that appears to remove any buttons you don’t need, or add any that do not currently exist.

Get started
While the most common way to access folders is via My Computer or Explorer, certain key folders can also be accessed from the Start menu, such as My Computer, My Documents and My Pictures. While this is handy, the Start menu may contain links to folders you don’t use very often, or may not necessarily be displayed in the best way.

To customise the way folders are shown in the Start menu, right-click the Start button and select Properties before clicking the Customize button. Move to the Advanced tab and scroll through the list until you see the entry relating to My Computer. By default, this item is a link in the Start menu that opens up when clicked, but it is possible to hide it completely by selecting ‘Don’t display this item’. You can also convert it into a menu for easier navigation by selecting ‘Display as a menu’. Repeat the process for any other folder that is listed.

Windows has a number of features and characteristics that don’t suit all users. As a large amount of time in Windows is spent navigating files and folders, it is fortunate they are relatively easy to customise. In next to no time, it is possible to increase productivity by making files easier to locate and identify, as well as configure different sets of options for folders that contain different file types.

Folders in Vista
In this feature, we have concentrated on customising folders in Windows XP, but there are similar options, along with a few extras, available in Vista as well.

Accessing Folder Options can again be achieved through the Control Panel, or by clicking the Organize button in any folder and selecting the Folder and Search Options entry from the menu that appears. One of the most noticeable things about Vista’s folders is the absence of the menu bar, but this can be restored by ticking the ‘Always show menus’ box in Folder Options.

It is also possible to force Vista to always display file icons rather than thumbnails by ticking the relevant box, but when working in thumbnail view you can choose whether or not to overlay a smaller file type icon as well. A key difference with folders in Vista is the number of different viewing options that are available. Click the Views button and use the slider to choose an icon size and detail level.



Files and folders are an integral part of Windows, yet they don’t always look or behave the way we’d

Mark Wilson, Computeract!ve, 01 Sep 2007