Folder Options

Folder Options

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Control Panel [Appearance and Themes] Folder Options

Windows Explorer Tools Folder Options

The Folder Options contains settings that affect Windows Explorer, and how folder windows and file listings look and behave. See Chapter 4 for a list of all Windows settings. Some of the more confusing Folder Options are documented here:

Setting	Description
Common Tasks	The common tasks pane appears along the left side of folder listings in Explorer and single-folder windows, which contains information and links related to the currently selected folder and file. Of note is the feature to turn on or off the category view in Control Panel, a setting unavailable if the common tasks pane is disabled.
Display the simple folder view in Explorer's Folders list	This option simply shows or hides the dotted lines shown in the collapsible folder tree in Windows Explorer.
Display the contents of system folders	Enable this option to eliminate the warning that appears when you open certain folders, such as c:\ and \Windows .
Hide extensions for known file types	See below for reasons why this option should always be turned off.
Launch folder windows in a separate process	This starts a new instance of the Windows Explorer application every time you open a new folder window; although it consumes slightly more memory, it means that if one Explorer window crashes, they won't all crash.
Use Simple File Sharing	Despite the "Recommended" note here, it is strongly recommended that this option be disabled for security purposes.

About file types

The term file types describes the collection of associations between documents and the applications that use them. For example, Windows knows to run Notepad when you double-click on a file with the .txt extension (such as Readme.txt ).

TIP

By default, Windows hides the extensions of registered file types in Explorer and on the Desktop, but it's best to have them displayed (set in the View tab). File extensions allow you to easily determine what kind of file you're dealing with (because icons are almost never descriptive enough). They also allow you to change how Windows interacts with a file by simply renaming the extension.

All registered file extensions and their descriptions are shown in the Registered file types list. Select any file type from the list and click Advanced.

The Actions listbox that appears contains a list of the customizable context menu items. The bold item is the default action, also shown in bold at the top of the context menu. Each entry has a name and a command line; a typical command line (the one for the .txt file type) might look like this: notepad /p "%1" . This instructs Windows to launch Notepad with the /p parameter when you double-click on a .txt file. The %1 signifies the name of the selected file, and the quotation marks ensure compatiblity with any spaces in the filenames.