Windows 7 Annoyances

Customize Windows Explorer

The Folder Options window—used to control a lot of the way Windows Explorer displays and handles files—is a mess. Like many other Control Panel windows, it’s a remnant of earlier times, having not changed very much in the 14 years since its debut in Windows 95.

Because so many annoyances can be caused by—or solved with—settings in Folder Options, it’s only fitting to begin this section with an explanation of what these options do.

In Explorer, open the Organize drop-down and select Folder and Search Options (or open Folder Options in Control Panel). First up is the General tab, which essentially has only four options.

The first, Browse folders, is a throwback to the way folder windows worked in Windows 95. In Windows 7, if you select Open each folder in its own window, you’ll get a new Windows Explorer window when you double-click a folder icon in the righthand pane only, whether or not the Navigation pane (folder tree) is shown. Regardless of this setting, Explorer opens a new window whenever you double-click a folder icon on the desktop, click a shortcut for Explorer, or Shift+click the Explorer taskbar button.

Note

Use the Ctrl key when double-clicking a folder icon to override your choice here: open a new window when it would otherwise use the same window, or vice versa. (It only works if the folder isn’t already highlighted.) And you can always right-click any folder icon and select Open in new window to do just that.

The Click items as follows option lets ...