Microsoft Monday
Vista is more known for all of its visual appeal than it is for the “under the hood” types of features. One such feature is the new file management options in Windows Vista that allow you to sort, group, filter, and stack your files. It’s simply a new approach to organizing all of your files in Windows Explorer, and something I think you’ll find convenient. Of course there’s still the option to sort files just as you always have in XP, but there’s so much more to file management in Vista than just sorting. Today we’ll go through how to group, filter, and stack your files in Windows Explorer.
Step 1:
Open up Windows Explorer (Windows Key + E), and open a folder that you’d like to view. Notice at the top that there are column headings, and drop-down menus will appear when you hover over one of those headings. The four column headings you’ll probably see see are name, date modified, type, and size. These are always there, no matter which view you’re in (list, icon view, etc.).
Step 2 – Grouping and Filtering
I like to think of the grouping feature like a file cabinet. When you have a file cabinet, all of the papers aren’t just thrown in the drawer. Instead, they’re nicely organized into folders and then placed in the drawer either in alphabetical order, or some other form or organization. Grouping allows us to place files and folders into groups whether it be a group based upon the name in which case it would be in alphabetical order, or the type of file in which case they would be grouped by whether it’s a PDF, a word document, or any other type. The screenshot below shows what I clicked to group my files by files type. First I clicked the drop-down menu besides “Type”, then I clicked “Group.”
Once I clicked “Group,” my files were then grouped by type. Instead of a list of files sorted by name, I had a list of files grouped by the type of file it was. The first screenshot on the left shows what it looks like before grouping, and the second shows what it looks like after grouping. You’ll notice that I have 5 different groups – one for my GIF Image, another for my JPEG Image, one for Microsoft Excel Files, etc.
click to enlarge
Isn’t it nice how everything is grouped? You can also collapse groups by clicking the arrow at the end of every dividing line for each group. If you were to select group under the column heading “Name,” files would be placed in alphabetical order. If you were to select group under Date Modified, it would divide files into groups based upon the various dates they were modified. I think you get the idea of how this works.
So where does the filtering come into play? Well, under each column header will be a list of different filtering options. The image below shows me my options for the “Name” column. By checking the A-H option, it will show only the A-H files.
Step 3 – Stacks
Another new feature in Windows Vista is the option to Stack. If I were to stack files by name, they would appear almost like they would with a group, except none of the file names are actually shown. Instead you’d double click on the stack that you want and it will open up all of the corresponding files. The more files that correspond with a particular stack, the larger the “stack icon” will be. This is essentially just using Vista’s built-in search engine to find matching files, so this means that it’s able to dive into sub-folders to grab additional matching files as well.
The image below shows what happened when I stacked files based upon file type.
Wrapping it up
The new file management options in Windows Vista moves away from the hierarchical folder structure that we were previously used to and can help you find what you’re looking for faster. Gone are the days when your only options were to sort the files in a window in chronological or alphabetical order, and in are the days when you have tons of options to keep all of your files neatly organized.
Thanks for the tip OldManDeath!
On its own, file type grouping can even avoid to create new folders to keep files sorted (i.e the way you show in Step 2, the view at right above “click to enlarge”).
Easy file(s) management, this way, by drag and drop to any (left pane) folder.Coupled with some tools like Filemenu, AudioShell, 7zip, BRU, explorer finally becomes a daily handy tool with Vista.
Even at work.
File grouping is also available in WinXP inside “Organize Icons” in the Windows Explorer contextual menu or in the top “View/Organize Icons” menu.
I’ve used this a few times while searching through groups of files in Vista. It wasn’t that useful…but might come in handy down the road.
It doesn’t perform exactly the same way though. You can arrange the icons according to type, name, and more, but it doesn’t actually group them. So that is technically considered sorting, and not grouping. The groups in Vista can be expanded and contracted.
I hadn’t used it all that much until I really sat down to figure out how it works. Now that I understand it more I’ve found that I use it all the time.
In Stacks on Leopard you can visually see what the document is as opposed to the little tiny icon that states GIF, JPEG or otherwise, as seen above.
Give it a couple of months and I’m sure that a true Stacks clone will hit the web for all those in the wonderful world of windows.
Nice try but no cigar.
Huh? We never even made that comparison. Vista’s Stacks were never meant to compete with Leopard’s Stacks. And there already are clones of Leopard’s Stacks for both Windows and Linux.
Ryan wrote “it doesn’t perform exactly the same way…”.
He just said it all. And all right.
Vista is so blamed everywhere that it’s good to hear about some its features, regarding previous windows versions.
But it’s better to run Vista with 2Go ram to get all of it. Below, complaining is just not honnest!
Vista runs clearly even better with 4Gb of ram. Then it takes full advantage of SuperFetch, and programs loads much faster. Also desktop works smoother. Ram is almost free nowadays so í really recommend 4gb + 64bit Vista especially for high-end machines.
Lucky Asgard! Sure the more ram you have the better you run vista !
I’m allright with you!
But it seems that for the moment my HP notebook cannot eat more than 2Go. I Hope not having to change it! Hope I can bypass this one of these days with 2x 2Go ram banks ! It’s a Compaq Presario V6149, I.dual core2, x86. Has someone a tip to go further than the oem mentionned 2Go? That’s really annoying.
Vista is heavily criticized, and a lot of the people who I hear hate it are often the ones who haven’t even tried it. They just hear about stories from other people and they decide they want to stay away from it.
I have 3GB on one of my machines, and 2GB on the other two machines running Vista. I want to use 64-bit Vista on my computer but there are problems with drivers and such that have not been completely developed, and I don’t feel like jumping through hoops trying to get it to work.
What about save searches? What about using saved searches instead of real folders like smart folders in Mac OS X? What about the AND, OR and NOT operators? What about the index of searches that is basically a piece of s*it?
I’ve wasted my time here.
Must be your first time stopping by here. We’ve already written about that:
[cybernetnews.com]
@Leo
?!!…just keep cool AND you’ll feel better OR try to think twice !!!
XOR you gonna get furious, it seems!
Today, you can relax AND laugh a bit: just search AND jump to Mac OS Leopard review! Think you’ll appreciate one OR other comix.
One big issue with this is that you can’t group stuff within subfolders.
For instance, I’m currently sharing a laptop with vista on it with my sister. We both have a folder in documents for our stuff. But thus, since they are just subfolders in the documents folder, nothing inside can be grouped.
It’s sad.
Scratch that…if you change the folder to a “documents” folder, you can group stuff inside them
.
Yep, I’m glad you figured that out!
How come the games explorer keeps going back to “Last Played” and autosorting, even tho I keep turning auto off and begging it to just sort by name..PLEASE !
thanks in advance,
Steve