Windows 7 forum: Windows 7 folder view area

I'm not sure what the problem is.

In Windows Explorer, how are you changing the 'size' of a folder?

Mark

By 'size of a folder' I mean the size of the folder when it shows on the screen, not the size of the files in the folder. If I open a folder and change its physical size on the screen, all other folders that are opened have that same physical size. I want each folder to open with the same physical size it had when I last opened it.

This worked perfectly fine in Vista and all other versions of Windows before it but in Windows 7 there appears no way to get the OS to remember the size and the placement of folders from the last time a folder was displayed on the screen. This is a real PITA.

I think you didn't get the memo. It's been discussed a few times but folk have noticed the Explorer lost some tricks from XP, Vista to 7.

And wait for 8. You ain't seen nothing yet. Oh wait, you'll see less. Why? MSFT has written folk are getting confused.
Bob

As a test I have created two empty folders on my Desktop. I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate.

I can find no way to enlarge individual folder icon on the Desktop display. I've tried to drag the edges and corners and that doesn't work. I have gone into Properties, (right click the icon, select Properties), and can find no resize option.

I have right clicked the Desktop and selected View > Large icons, and that works, for all icons on the Desktop.

I've used all versions of Windows (except Win 2000), since Windows 95 came out and I have never been able to resize individual Desktop display icons.

The only other way I can see to do that is to reduce the screen resolution, but of course that enlarges everything and the resolution is poorer.

Can you please give a step by step guide how you do this?

Mark

I do not mean the folder icon. I mean opening a folder in Windows Explorer.

I assume the Desktop which I see when Windows 7 starts is just another folder in Windows Explorer. If I open a folder I have created on the Desktop it shows the items in that folder. I can expand or contract the folder I have just opened by dragging the size. After I close the folder I expect it to be the same size when I reopen it. But if I open another folder on the Desktop, change its size, close it, and open the previous folder again, the size of the previous folder is NOT what it was when I last closed it but the size of the latest folder I opened instead. In other words all sub-folders within any given folder ( the Destop is just another folder ), when opened, are shown NOT with their last opened size but rather with the size of the last sub-folder opened.

In other words Windows 7 no longer retains the size of each individual folder when it was last opened. Evidently Microsoft sees this "one size fits all" as an improvement on previous versions of Windows.

Ugh !!! What a bunch of ?%$#*@^ these Microsoft visual designers are !

You mean Window, not folder.

Everything that opens in a Windows operating system computer opens a "Windows". Each application you open opens a Window. When you open Windows Explorer, it opens a Window. Your browser that you are now using to read these posts is a browser window.

So, you may be using Windows Explorer to open a folder, but what it displays is a window with your folder contents inside.

You can size windows for applications and each application will remember the size the next time you open that application.

Windows Explorer will also remember the size it was the last time you opened it. But it will not remember different sizes for different folder or file locations.

Windows OS has never done this, so nothing broken and Microsoft have nothing to fix.

Mark

I am on the Desktop under Windows Vista. I open a folder I had created on the Desktop. It opens a window the same size when I last had opened it. I open another folder from the Desktop. It also opens a window of the exact same size when I last had opened it. I resize either folder and close it. I then reopen that folder and it retains the exact same size I had just resized it. I can do the same thing for any folder and its sub-folders in Windows Explorer and it works exactly the same way under Windows Vista. Windows Vista works this way because I have checked a folder option which says:

"Remember each folder's view settings."

In Windows 7 ever folder which I open on the Destop has exactly the same Window size of the last folder I opened. If I resize any folder, the next folder I open has exactly the same Windows size of the previous folder I had opened. This works the exact same way for all folders and sub-folders in Windows Explorer under Windows 7. In Windows 7 there is no longer a folder option of "Remember each folder's view settings."

Your assertion that:

"Windows Explorer will also remember the size it was the last time you opened it. But it will not remember different sizes for different folder or file locations.

Windows OS has never done this, so nothing broken and Microsoft have nothing to fix."

is shown to be incorrect.

You may feel that the folder option of ""Remember each folder's view settings" is not important to end users in previous versions of Windows but I assure you that I am not the only one who disagrees with that assumption.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/is-remember-each-folders-view-settings/633192ab-e435-48cd-8fcd-999e7195653c?page=1 is a 21-page discussion on this subject. And there are many, many more hits.

Seems they did this to increase the reliability of Explorer. What you don't have can't get corrupt either. If they didn't change it back in Windows 8 I'm afraid this feature is gone forever. Did you already check in the Consumer Preview?

Then all you can do: build it into your favorite Linux-distro and use that in stead of Windows.

Kees

I am a programmer myself and a very good one. It is impossible for me to beleive that removing such an easy to program feature has anything to do with the reliability of Explorer. It's not rocket science to create a database where for every folder in your system you keep track of various other items, such as the window size and position of the folder when it is opened. So I doubt it has anything to do with reliability, especially since a much less reliable part of Windows, the registry, has existed for years to hold important data.

No one is ever going to convince me that a real relational database is less reliable than the hierarchical Windows registry, which just about anyone and any program can corrupt without any problem. I am not saying that the registry is a wrong idea, as it certainly is not, but that keeping track of folders is a baby programming task which can be made as reliable as you want to make it.

Almost certainly Microsoft removed the individual folder view because some GUI 'genius' told them that it confuses mama-poppa computer user, and they bought this idiotic notion because that, in their opinion, is their ideal money-making market. Its simplification to the point of inanity, and everyone from Microsoft to the various IM/E-Mail/Social Networking providers and Best Buy software boutiques are now following it to the deteriment of anyone who actually wants to use software and understand how to do anything decent with it.