Arranging Windows Explorer Files in Windows 7

Are you using Windows 7 and frustrated with the way files are organised in Windows Explorer?   I was too!  I frequently sort my files by “Date Modified” when looking for things I’ve been working on recently.

Windows 7 tries to be smart and decide how I want files to be displayed.  For example, if you’re looking at a folder with photos in it it will automatically display thumbnails.  This is quite useful at times but if you want to find your most recently edited photos (rather than most recently taken) it can be difficult to do because by default Windows 7 will arrange “image folders” without a “Date Modified” field to sort by.  To get around this you have to click towards the upper right corner of the window to select additional columns (or right click somewhere within the window) and then after you’ve asked windows to display the date modified field you have to switch from thumbnail view to Details view to be able to see the column names in order to sort by the “Date Modified” column you just added! 

It’s all very painful and no matter how many times you ask windows to remember the setting and use the “apply to all folders” option it doesn’t seem to work and  you have to go through the motions frequently to achieve what should be the most simple of tasks.

Today however, I discovered there’s a way to make it work!  Finally!

1. Sselect the root folder of your drive (eg, c:\ or if you’re using an external drive it might be E:\ etc).
2. Right click on the root folder and select Properties.
3. Select the Customize tab.
4. Choose “General Items” under the  “Optimize this folder for:” option.
5. Tick the “Apply this template to all sub folders” box.

Once this is done you can set things up as you would have done with earlier versions of windows.  My personal preference is to default folders to “Details” view with the fields “Date Modified”,  “Size” and “Type” which are the fields I most commonly refer to and sort by.

Customize one of your folders the way you would like to set others to default to.

1. Select the fields you want right click in your windows explorer window choose “sort by”
2. Select the “More…” option
3. Tick the boxes of any fields you would like to use
4. Apply any other changes you’d like for example the default view (my preference for default is “Details”  and I change to thumbnails whenever I like for each specific folder I browse).

Once you have chosen the defaults you’d like to apply to all the folders on your computer finish off with the following steps:

(If your Menu bar isn’t already displayed press Alt + T  to bring up the Tools menu, if you’d like the menu displayed permanently choose the View tab under Folder Options and then tick the option for “Always show menus”)

1. Go to the Tools Menu
2. Select Folder Options
3. Click the View Tab
4. Click the “Apply to All Folders” button

That’s it!

If there are certain folders (eg. “My Pictures” or “My Music” ) that you would like displayed differently by default you can adjust those folders by doing the following:

1. Select the folder you wish to change (Do NOT select the folder via Libraries as this won’t give you the options you need, instead browse from your user file eg: C:\Users\Yourname\)
2. Right click on the folder name you wish to change
3. Select Properties
4. Click the Customize Tab
5. Choose the option you want under “Optimzie this folder for:” and if appropriate select “”Also apply this template to all subfolders”