Customize Windows Explorer Views

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