Customize Windows Explorer Views
| Have you ever
been working along on a project and all of a sudden the
light bulb goes on and it dawns on you that it's a colossal
waste of time? That's exactly what happened to me while I
was preparing this section on Customizing Windows Explorer
Views. The original intent was to explain how custom views
can be created using a series of switches and references to
root folders. The modified article below is the result of
that light bulb and a very easy way to accomplish all the
custom views you could want with nothing more than a few
mouse clicks and some quick copying and pasting. |
Depending on the type
of work, many users have little occasion to ever open Windows
Explorer. For others that frequently move and copy files, or for
chronic file organizers and shufflers such as myself, a great deal
of time is spent inside Explorer. However, much of that same time is
also wasted shuffling back and forth to the different locations you
need to access, especially when you first open Explorer. A lot of us
who grew up on earlier Windows versions have used many different
Explorer replacement programs and there is no shortage of them
available for XP that do an excellent job. Unfortunately, many of
the replacement programs are laden with features that are never
used. The method below simply shows how I use features built into XP
to make file management a bit easier than is possible with opening a
single Explorer window.
At the end of this
article I've provided a link to a Knowledge Base article that
explains how you can customize Explorer views by using different
switches in combination with variables to force Explorer to open in
different directories and views. Rather than going through all that
hassle, I think using shortcuts is much simpler and easier while
accomplishing the same task. Here's how I create different views and
one method of using them after they have been created.
A bit of planning never
hurt any project. To a degree, planning is what makes for successful
implementation, so think about the drives and folders you use most
often. No doubt some major patterns will emerge in the way you
access Explorer locations. Once you have the locations identified
it's time to create the shortcuts.
There are two ways to
create the shortcuts. Right clicking any open area of the desktop
and clicking Shortcut will open the Create Shortcut Wizard. From
there you browse to the drive or folder you want the shortcut to
access. The second screen of the wizard allows you to assign a
shortcut name. Click Finish and you're done. Quicker and easier than
the Create Shortcut Wizard is to open Windows Explorer, navigate to
the drive or folder, right click and drag and drop it on the desktop
and click Create Shortcut Here in the context menu that appears.
Done.
So now you have all
these shortcuts littering your desktop. What can you do with them?
Well, there are a number of options. If you aren't opposed to
leaving them on the desktop, you could line them up across the
bottom of the desktop (or anyplace else) and access them directly,
but they would be hidden if you had an application maximized on the
desktop.
A neater solution would
be to place them all in one desktop folder, but then you'd have to
open the folder to gain easy access to the shortcuts, similar to the
problem above. Of course, you could use the folder idea and then
drag it into the All Programs category in the Start Menu. This would
provide access to the shortcuts no matter what else you had open on
the desktop. If you use the Quick Launch feature of XP's Taskbar,
dragging either the individual shortcuts or a folder containing all
of them into the Quick Launch area would work well.
An idea that works
equally as well as the Quick Launch area is to stash the folder
containing the shortcuts anywhere you want on any drive and then
create a new toolbar on the Taskbar. Just right click the Taskbar,
navigate to [Toolbars] and then click [New Toolbar...]. Use the tree
to navigate to where you placed the shortcuts folder, select it,
click [OK] and you have a new toolbar. As you can see from the
screen cap below, I chose the last option.
Now we have the taskbar
shortcut to the Shortcuts folder, easily accessible and containing
the pieces we need to make them do something useful. I'll admit,
this next step may not be to everyone's taste, but this is how I use
the shortcuts to create what used to be referred to as a dual pane
file manager. Why a dual pane file manager? Because it's much easier
to drag files between two panes focused on different directory trees
than it is to use a single pane.
Open one of the
shortcuts you created and size it to fill half the desktop
horizontally and full height vertically. Do the same thing with
another shortcut, sizing it to fill the other half of the desktop.
When you are done, it should look something similar to the screen
capture below.
The entire desktop has
now been covered with two of the shortcuts that were created. In
this screen capture (yes, I know it's hard to see much detail, but
you didn't want to wait ten minutes for this page to load did you?)
the left half is drive C and the right half is drive E. Once you
have resized the windows, whenever you open them again they will be
the same size and in their respective halves of the desktop.
Unfortunately, they will always open in the Explorer Bar view which
is shown in drive E, but a quick click on the Folders button will
toggle the views between Explorer Bar and Task Pane view. The
Explorer Bar view is very handy when you are creating new folders.
Earlier I mentioned
planning and analyzing your work patterns and habits. This is where
that comes into play. If you have the screen real estate (and damn
good eyesight) you could cram three windows across the desktop, but
I find two are usually sufficient. I normally keep a My Documents
shortcut open on the left side and another drive open on the right.
The planning allows you to place the windows where you normally use
them relative to the drive combinations your workflow pattern
follows. A little experimentation will show you whether you prefer a
specific shortcut to open on the left or the right.
Remember. You can
create the shortcuts to any drive, folder, or subfolder including
drives and folders on another computer connected to your Local Area
Network (LAN). The XP interface seemed pretty cumbersome to me at
first, but I adapted. This may seem a bit strange also, but if you
give it a try you might just like it - even if your name isn't Mikey,
and it won't cost you $50 or so for a dual pane Windows Explorer
replacement.
Here's that link to
the Knowledge Base I mentioned at the beginning of this article.
Knowledge Base Article Q307856 - Customize the Windows Explorer
Views in Windows XP
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