Changing Windows 7 folder options tutorial + video

Do you want to save time and energy when viewing your Folders in Windows Explorer for Windows 7?  Well, you can by just typing “folder options” in the Windows start menu textbox in Windows 7 or Vista. In the Folder options wizard, you can change general settings like  Browse, Click item behavior, and Navigation pane. You can also change how you want to view the files in the folder in the view tab and how to search your PC’s drives in the search tab.

In the General Tab, I recommend you pick “single click”  in the “Click item as foller ” box. By using single click, you will save time and energy since now you can just click a shortcut once to open an item. The browse folder and Navigation Pane you can leave alone since they are fine as is. Unless, you need to open every folder in a new windows, or you use the Navigation pane a lot then you should check “Show all folder” and “Automatically expand to current folder”.

In the View Tab for Folder Options, I recommend you

don’t check “Always show icon, never thumbnail”, so you can have a small thumbnail preview of a picture or video file before you open it. If you have a slower computer with not a lot of hard drive space or a fast CPU and lots of RAM Checking it can save disk space and improve performance, but your thumbnail previews will be gone.

 Make sure to select “show hidden files, folders and drives”, so you can view hidden files and folders. This is useful for disk clean up since you can now easily delete files and folders which you can’t find. It is also useful for troubleshooting since sometimes you need to edit a hidden system file like a .bat or text base script to fix your PC.

 Uncheck “hide empty drives in computer folder”, so it will be easier to figure out if your card reader is being recognized by Windows without inserting a flash memory device in your flash card reader.

For security reasons, you should uncheck “hide file extensions for known file types”. A virus writer can name a file Picture.jpeg.exe and give the exe file a thumbnail icon. If hide file extension for known file extension is checked then it will look like it is a picture file “picture.jpeg” instead of an executable file like picture.jpeg.exe. 

A convenient feature in Windows 7 is “Use checkboxs to select items” , so make sure it is checked in the view tab. This is convient because it allows you to easily select items with your mouse with checkboxs like a check list.

You can leave the search tab a lone since editing the search tab will make your searches not as fast . The only thing I recommend is checking “Include compress files (Zip, Cab…) since they can contain what you are looking for in your searches.

When you are all done customizing your folder options, click Apply. Now you should notice that your folders are easier to navigate and find files.