Windows Explorer Folder Options

Change folder options to customize Windows.success folder image by Yurok Aleksandrovich from Fotolia.com

Changing folder options in Windows Explorer allows you to specify how you want files and folders to function and how you want items to display on your computer. You can access the folder options in Windows 7 by clicking "Start" and "Control Panel," choosing "Appearance and Personalization" and then clicking "Folder Options." Click "OK" to confirm after making your selections. To restore the original settings, click "Restore Defaults" and "OK."

Opening Folders

Under the General tab select "Open each folder in its own window" to keep all the folders you're working on open on your screen at the same time. The default option is "Open each folder in the same window" to keep one folder window open and replace the previously-opened folder with the new one. You can choose to open files and folders with a single click, rather than the default double click, by clicking "Single-click to open an item (point to select)" under the General tab. Opt to open each folder in a separate part of memory by selecting "Launch folder windows in a separate process," under the View tab. Doing so can increase the stability of Windows but can also slow down your system. To return to your work from a previous session, you can choose to have Windows automatically open the folders you were last using as you log on. Check "Restore previous folder windows at logon" in the View tab to achieve this.

The default option is to show thumbnail previews of files, but this can slow down some computer systems. Click on the "View" tab and select "Always show icons, never thumbnails," to display icons instead of thumbnail previews. To make access to the program easier, select "Display file icons on thumbnails" instead. When you point to a folder, you can have the file or folder size display in a tip by selecting "Display file size information in folder tips" from the View tab. Alternatively you can turn off tips completely, by clearing the check box for "Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items." Windows lets you choose whether you see hidden items, protected system files or file extensions with the options "Show hidden files, folders and drives," "Hide protected operating system files" and "Hide extensions for known file types" respectively. You can access all these choices under the View tab. File contents are displayed in the preview pane by default, but if this slows down your system you can change the setting by clearing "Show preview handlers in preview pane."

Windows hides the classic menus above the toolbar by default. To restore them, check "Always show menus" under the View tab. If you want Windows to hide drive letters in the Computer folder and display "friendly" drive names only, uncheck "Show drive letters." The Computer folder also hides empty removable media drives, such as USB drives and card readers by default; to show them, uncheck "Hide empty drives in the Computer folder." Compressed or encrypted NTFS files can be displayed with special color coding to identify them by selecting "Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color." If you have difficulty selecting multiple files, you can opt to have check boxes next to each file by checking "Use check boxes to select items." Finally, you can choose to have the cursor placed in the search box automatically when you start typing by selecting "Automatically type into the Search Box" under "When typing into list view."