I don’t know about you, but when I’m working on a large network, I find it frustrating to have to search through hierarchies of folders on different drives, looking for my key folders, some of which could be buried many layers down. So I like to spend a bit of time setting up my own environment so that I can go straight to each of these key folders and display its contents. And, since I may need to open a key folder several times a day, I like to be able to control the way the files are displayed when I open up that folder—generally, my preference is for a folder to open in a dual-pane Explorer view, with the navigator pane (not the Windows Explorer task pane) on the left. I prefer some folders to open maximised and other folders—usually smaller ones—to open in normal (neither maximised nor minimised) size. With a bit of experimentation and a lot of searching and fiddling around, I’ve found ways to achieve a suitable set-up for achieving this.
The picture on the right shows the bottom right of the desktop on my computer at home. Clicking on the symbol has caused a pop-up menu to appear, listing just the key folders that I want quick access to. The steps below show how to achieve a set-up like this.
I now have my shortcut, but when I double-click it, the display looks how Windows thinks it should look, not how I like it. I need to fix that.
The comma is part of the string and should not be followed by a space (the quote at the start of the pathname of the target folder should come directly after the comma).
That’s the end of the main story, but I should mention some possible variants.
(again, the final comma is part of the string, not my punctuation) then that particular shortcut will open the dual-pane Explorer window to show the relevant target folder at the topmost level (the ‘root’)—that is, the navigator pane shows nothing but this folder and its subfolders. This can be useful if I want to clear away extra clutter, but I can’t then go up a level if I decide I’m looking for something else.
and then the Explorer navigator pane reverts to showing the whole hierarchy, but the target folder is selected in the right-hand pane. (I don’t see much use for this.)
Finally, I’ve recently come across some other useful shortcuts constructed along similar lines, but with special target folders—ones that I need to use codes to find.
Then I click Next, enter a name for the shortcut and click Finish. The shortcut now appears on my desktop. I can now make the same cosmetic changes as before—change the icon, etc—by right-clicking and selecting Properties. Afterwards I drag the shortcut to the folder where I put the others.
This last one has some interesting variants too.
(I strongly advise you to cut and paste these, rather than copying them character by character!!)
Note. You may also like to check out this link, to a message posted to the austechwriter list by Stuart Burnfield, which suggests other ways of making Windows Explorer easy to use.
It’s been pointed out to me that some of the following steps may be unnecessary. Have a look at this page and locate the paragraph headed Force My Computer Desktop Icon To Open In Windows Explorer Mode. This describes a way to get force folders to open in Explorer mode.