File Management Muscle

You don't need X-ray vision to see what's inside a Windows file without opening it. And XP adds even more tools and techniques for identifying files and determining their contents. You still have to spend time arranging your files, but knowing all of Windows' tricks will make the chore less, well, chorelike.

ME, 2K, XP: Give Me the Details If you prefer Details view in your Explorer or folder windows (choose View, Details), you may not be getting all you want. These days, many file formats store lots of data beyond the default Name, Size, Type, and Date Modified information available in earlier versions of Windows. For example, MP3 music files can include an album title, artist's name, track duration, and much more. Word, Excel, and other Microsoft Office files contain such information as the title, author, and subject.

Much of this information can be viewed in Explorer and in folder windows without your having to open the files or their Properties dialog boxes. To arrange to get all the details, select View, Choose Details (in Windows XP) or View, Choose Columns (in Windows Me and 2000). Check the items appropriate for the files you keep in the current folder, and click OK. For customizing on the fly, right-click any of the column headings above the file list and then choose a category you want to display or hide (see FIGURE 1). Not all categories appear in this context menu, but if you don't see one that you want, select More... at the bottom of the menu to open the Choose Details dialog box.

Bonus tip: To customize the information that Explorer displays for a Word or Excel document, right-click the file in Explorer and choose Properties (or Alt-double-click the file icon). Click the Summary tab and add to or modify the information listed there. You can use the Custom tab to introduce even more information, but not all of the categories available for filling will be visible in Explorer's Details view.

All Versions: Unkludge Your Columns Once you've added categories to your folders' Details view, you may have to scroll back and forth to see all the headings. Follow these steps to get a grip on your columns:

• Drag the column heads left or right to rearrange their order.
  
  
• Drag a column head's right boundary left or right to change the column size.
  
  
• Double-click a column head's right boundary to resize the column to the length of the longest item in the column.
  
  
• With the document pane selected, hold down Ctrl as you press NumPad Plus (the plus sign on the numeric keypad) to resize all columns at once.
  
  

To enable these tips to work, you may have to remove categories. In Windows 9x you hide categories by dragging the column head's right border to the left until the column disappears. Drag right or press Ctrl- NumPad Plus to restore it.

XP: A Tile of a View If you are a fan of the Large Icons view offered in previous versions of Windows Explorer, you'll love Tiles, the gigantic icons in Windows XP. To see the icons, choose View, Tiles. (Notice that the Large Icons view has become simply 'Icons' in XP's Explorer.)

Tiles seem to be part of the Microsoft effort to simplify XP to the level of the most unsophisticated computerphobe, but they're not without redeeming qualities. For example, to the right of each tile is a brief summary of file information specific to that file type. Some of this information isn't visible by default in Details view (see "Give Me the Details," above). Tiles view works best if your folders contain only a few items or if you want to give files distinctive icons to make them easy to recognize. It's especially good for folders that you store icon (.ico) and cursor (.cur) files in (see FIGURE 2).

XP: Get Your Thumbnails in a Row For folders that contain only a small number of graphics files, Windows XP offers Filmstrip view, which, despite its name, has nothing to do with video. Choose View, Filmstrip to display a preview of the selected file at the top of the right Explorer pane, along with thumbnails of the other files in the folder in a strip running along the bottom of the right pane.

Below the previewed image are slide-show forward and backward buttons, and two buttons that rotate the image left and right. Be forewarned: The rotation buttons actually open and save the file permanently in its rotated state (see FIGURE 3). This is less important if you're using an uncompressed format such as .bmp (bitmap) or a loss-less compression format such as .gif. But rotating .jpg or other files with "lossy" compression will reduce the quality of the file with each rotation.

If you don't see the Filmstrip option in the View menu, choose View, Customize This Folder, click the Customize tab, select Photo Album in the drop-down list at the top, and click OK.

XP: A New Thumbnails View The Thumbnails view in XP has a new twist. If a folder contains images saved in a common Web format, such as .gif, .png, or .jpg, XP will create an icon for the folder that displays up to four of the images it contains, providing a glimpse of its contents. To show a single image, right-click the folder icon, choose Properties, and click the Customize tab. Or open the folder, right-click an empty area of the window, and choose Customize This Folder. (Alternatively, you can choose Customize This Folder on the View menu.) Click the Customize tab, and under 'Folder pictures' select Choose Picture. Select the picture you want to show in the thumbnail (see the following bonus tip), and click Open. If the preview image is to your liking, click OK. If not, click Choose Picture again to find another picture, or select Restore Default to remove the picture from the folder thumbnail.

Bonus tip: You needn't scroll through a list of file names to find the image file you want to show in the thumbnail. Instead, set the Browse dialog box (which appears when you select Choose Picture) to show thumbnails. Click the View icon to the far right of the 'Look in' drop-down menu, and choose Thumbnails. If your view is too crowded, drag any edge of the dialog box to make it bigger. Unfortunately, Windows forgets these settings the next time you open the dialog box.

All Versions: The Sort You See When you choose View, Details in Explorer, you can sort the information you see by clicking a column heading (Name, Type, Size, or the like) to list files by that criterion. Click the column heading again to reverse the order. Windows Me and 2000 add a tiny arrow to the column that currently sets the sort order: An up arrow indicates ascending order; a down arrow, descending order. Windows XP goes this one better by highlighting the column head or the entire column that controls the sort, making it even easier to spot the prevailing arrangement at a glance.

All Versions: The Folder Sort To sort your file and folder icons in Explorer views other than Details, right-click inside the folder and choose Arrange Icons by--or choose View, Arrange Icons by--and then select a sort criterion. Unfortunately, the only way to tell how the items are currently sorted is to figure it out for yourself. In Windows XP, the possible sort criteria listed on the 'Arrange Icons by' menu change according to your settings in the Choose Details dialog box, so be sure to read the tip "Give Me the Details" above.

All Versions: Sort It Yourself To arrange a folder's items manually, choose any view except List or Details, and then drag and drop items (or groups of items that you select by Ctrl-clicking them) to get the arrangement you prefer. To keep your files in nice, neat rows and columns, click the View menu or right-click inside the folder and choose Arrange Icons by, Auto Arrange (provided that it isn't already checked).

XP: Get With the Group There are many new ways to view a folder's contents in XP, the most useful of which may be the 'Show in Groups' option on the 'Arrange Icons by' submenu. Choose View, Arrange Icons by, or right-click inside a folder and select Arrange Icons by, Show in Groups. Windows will arrange the icons in logical groupings based on your chosen sort order. For example, if the files are sorted by name, the groups will be the letters of the alphabet. If you sort by date, you'll get groups with names such as 'Yesterday', 'Last week', 'Last month', and 'Earlier this year'. Sorting by size will yield groups named 'Tiny', 'Medium', 'Large', and the like. It's no substitute for having a good file-storage system, but distributing large numbers of folders and files into these (somewhat) meaningful bins simplifies file management. Don't like it? Simply choose the command again to turn it off.

ME, XP: Compress in a Jiffy The ability to compress bitmap images and other large files before e-mailing or archiving them is a welcome new feature of Windows Me and XP. To compress, or zip, a file or folder, right-click in a folder or on the desktop and choose New, Compressed (zipped) Folder. Drag files to this folder to compress them in the .zip file. If most of the files are in a single folder, just select the files or subfolders, right-click the selection, and choose Send To, Compressed (zipped) Folder. Windows will create a new compressed folder named after the first file you selected and will include all the selected files and/or subfolders. To add files to or remove them from the compressed folder, drag and drop them as you would any folder. Naturally, you can rename the compressed folder by highlighting it, clicking it again (slowly, so as not to open it), and entering the new name, or by right-clicking and choosing Rename.

In Windows Me, you may need to install the compression option from your Windows Me CD. Pop the CD into the drive, and open Control Panel. Double-click Add/Remove Programs, click the Windows Setup tab, select System Tools, and click Details. Check Compressed Folders, click OK as many times as needed, and follow the on-screen prompts.

ME, XP: Decompress in a Flash You can decompress files by dragging them out of the compressed folder and dropping them where you like. But if you're decompressing all the files in a compressed folder in Windows XP, simply right-click and drag the folder to the desired location and then choose Extract Here.

To put the decompressed files into a new folder, either right-drag the files as explained above (XP only), or right-drag the compressed folder to the new folder and choose Extract to launch the Extract Wizard (in Me) or the Extraction Wizard (in XP). Using the wizard is faster than right-dragging. Just press Enter once (in Me) or twice (in XP), wait for decompression to finish, and press Enter again.

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