Not many users know that Windows Explorer is offering several options on how the folders and files are displayed. One useful Windows Explorer tip that I came across a while ago is to arrange the files and folders in groups in Windows Explorer. This basically means that every file will be sorted in a group that consists of its starting letter and one additional group for numbers and special chars.
The alphabetical view is only one of four to chose from: You can also sort by size (zero, tiny..), type (applications, Avi File..) and Modified Date (Today, Last Week..). Thanks Rarst for pointing that out.
Not every view mode in Windows Explorer offers this setting on the other hand. The popular list view mode does not offer it, all other modes do.
The new mode can be activated easily by clicking on View in the top bar of Windows Explorer. That menu displays the current view mode with a bullet. Make sure it is not the List mode.
Scroll down to the Arrange Icons By submenu and click on the Show in Groups entry. This should activate group mode in Windows Explorer as seen above. The view depends of course on the selected view mode, what you see above is the Tiles view mode.
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By the way it’s default for “My computer”.
And it’s not only alphabet. After swtiching to groups you can change groups to file types, size and time of last change.
For drives (on “My computer”) you get type (default), name, size and free space groups.
Rarst you are right of course. Will add that information to the article, completely forgot that part ;) Was thinking that this was post 4000 on this blog all the time, hehe.
congrats on 4000, martin!
the single best explorer tip i ever got was to install qttabbar. may have been from you. can’t remember. awesome.
The single best explorer tip I can give – use proper file manager. :) DOS old timers really have hard time accepting all these iconized sidebarish stuff… :)
grats, Martin! :)