It still takes multiple actions to copy files to that new folder, and while you could use a program like MyFolders to quickly move or copy files to selected folders, the action would still require multiple steps to complete.

Smart Folders is a free program for the Windows operating system that combines folder generation and file moving in one step.

When you start the program for the first time you need to click on the install button to register its functionality in Windows Explorer. Please note that you can only use it in Windows Explorer and not in third party file managers that you may have installed as well.

The basic idea is simple: Drag and drop files onto each other to spawn a new folder creation prompt. Enter the desired name for the new folder to complete the action.

This works only with files that you drag on top of each other, and not with folders.

The program is by default compatible with all file extensions. You can limit that functionality in the program settings by registering only select file extensions. This did not work properly during tests though.

You can unregister the program functionality at any time with a click on the uninstall button in the program interface.

Smart Folders is a handy tool for users who often need to create new folders to move files into them. It is especially useful to move different file types quickly into different new folders.

Drop It is an alternative for that specific purpose. It can be used to sort files based on patterns into destination folders. A pattern can be a file extension for instance.

You can download Smart Folders from the Addictive Tips website.

My Folders is a free software for the Windows operating system that improves folder management and functionality of Windows Explorer significantly. It is in many regards similar to previously reviewed programs such as Folder Guide or Direct Folders.

It can be used to configure quick access folders for various operations, including opening, copying or moving to, and opening the command window in.

New users should run the configuration tool first which allows them to add, remove, order and separate folders from each other. Folder links to the My Documents and Desktop folder are already in place, with options to add an unlimited amount of new folders to the folder listing.

These folders appear then under the MyFolders context menu entry in Windows Explorer.

Commands are displayed in submenus under the main menu entry. Here is a quick explanation of each entry’s functionality.

• Copy To: Copies all selected files and folders to one of the quick links folders added during the program configuration phase.
• Move To: The same as Copy To, but moves files or folders instead of copying them.
• Go to: Opens the selected folder right away in Windows Explorer.
• Open Command Window in: Opens a command prompt window with the selected folder as the starting path.

A (new) folder link is available in each submenu to run the command on new folders with options to add the selected folder to the folder listing permanently.

It is furthermore possible to add selected folders directly to the quick access listing.

MyFolders is a useful tool for Windows users who often have to copy or move files to specific destinations on the system. Instead of opening two Explorer windows or dragging and dropping files and folders, they can now simply right-click and select the copy or move command to perform the operation.

Windows users can download MyFolders from the developer website. The program is compatible with all recent versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

When you use Windows Explorer in thumbnail view mode, and it does not really matter if you display folders and files in small, medium or larged size thumbnails, you will notice that some folders display one of the stored images in their icon. Folders without images display as blanks instead.

You sometimes may want to change the image that is displayed by default, for instance if another image is more appropriately characterizing the folder or if you do not want that particular image to be displayed prominently in Windows Explorer.

It is possible to customize the folder picture thubmnail so that another image is shown instead. Please note that the following guide demonstrates how this is done under Windows 7. Other operating systems may or may not offer this feature at all.

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the folder that you want to change the thumbnail image for. Right-click on the folder and select Properties from the options. Please note that you need to select the real folder path for that operation and not a virtual folder (like a library folder). The My Pictures folder for instance would require you to open C:\Users\username\Pictures in Windows Explorer.

Switch to the Customize tab in the Properties window and locate Choose File under Folder Pictures.

A click on choose file opens a folder browser where another image can be selected to be that folder’s preview picture. Just select the image and click on open to assign it to the folder. Click on ok again in the properties window to close it. The changes should be visible right away. You can repeat the process for as many folders as you like.

It is really appalling to me that this is still happening.  After all, the focus of your PC has for too long appeared to be Windows itself, but it just isn’t.  The main focus of your PC is your files and documents surely!

Windows is designed to be installed on single disk systems, it’s always been that way.  You install Windows onto your C: drive and a folder will be created for your files.  Your ‘personal’ folders will automatically be stored there (Documents, Pictures, Music and the like) and any new files you copy over to your PC will be put there.

The problem is that as and when something goes wrong with Windows, which is inevitable eventually, you risk losing all your files and data if you don’t keep regular backups.  I get emails from people all the time asking for help with this and how they can get their data back, or at least not lose it to begin with.

Now you’re probably saying at this point that people should always keep regular backups of their data, and you won’t get any argument from me.  It’s not always that simple though, especially if you have a lot of critical files that change regularly.  There are also personal, financial or other circumstances that mean people won’t have regular backups or backups at all.  Let’s not forget that while Windows 7 might nag you to back up your files, millions of people are still using Windows XP and Vista which don’t, and most of those people and the people using Windows 7 aren’t technically minded and may not even know what this means.

This should therefore mean that Microsoft need to guide people and help them to keep their files and data safe.  They’ve made precious little progress here in the last decade though, having only added the ability with Windows Vista to cut and paste your ‘user folders’ to another location easily.  There’s no indication you can actually do this however, no help on the matter and no nagging from the Windows 7 Action Centre to remind you to do so.

With Windows 8 I’m beginning to feel the gloom setting in that nothing more will change.  What we desperately need is one of the following two scenarios but I’m doubtful somehow that either will happen.

Scenario 1 : Separation at Installation- It wouldn’t be too difficult for the Windows installer to ask you, when times comes to install Windows.  “Do you want to install Windows and your user files onto this 1Tb hard disk in your computer or would you like to separate them”, before going onto explain why seperating them is a good idea.

The installer could then do one of the following, ask what you want to use your computer for (light use, music and photos, work, gaming) and create two partitions of recommended size.  Alternatively it could split the hard drive by proportion, 50/50, 30/70 and so on or finally it could ask you what size you want the two partitions to be and make recommendations to you.

All of these options would be simple enough for people to understand and it would be easy and simple for the Windows installer, on a clean install anyway, to do this for you.

Scenario 2 : Separation after Installation – Windows already has the ability to grow and shrink partitions.  Why doesn’t it suggest to you after you install it through an Action Centre message that “You can greatly decrease the chances of losing files and data by moving them away from Windows, would you like to do this now?”

Here there would again be several options.  It could shrink the current Windows Partition and then move the user folders for you.  Alternatively, if you have a separate hard disk it could simply move the user files there.  It’s easy for Windows to determine what is internal and external storage so this wouldn’t be at all difficult.  This would also mean that if you’re reinstalling and have already moved the folders in the past, the pointers will be updated in Windows to where you’ve put them.

Are either of these scenarios likely to happen though?  Moving your files and folders away from your Windows installation is something I feel very strongly about and it’s something I write about at some length in my book Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out. 

There are ways to make sure you don’t ever lose your files and data (unsurprisingly I write about those as well, and will write additional articles on the subject here in the coming weeks) but in the mean time keep the emails coming to mike@MVPs.org.

Still, the majority of users makes use of the default way of opening folders. The problem? It is not really comfortable, nor fast, especially if the folder is hidden deep in the file system.

Chameleon Folder offers a free alternative. The program puts a custom folder menu at your fingertips. Holding down the keys Windows and Z opens it anywhere on the desktop, so that the configured folders can be accessed directly and without slow downs. The menu opens as well if the middle mouse button is clicked in Explorer, or on the Desktop.

The folders that are displayed to the user are customizable, as are the keyboard hotkey and other settings that define visuals and program functionality.

chameleon folder

New users should start by opening the program options. This can be done by pressing Windows-Z and selecting options from the menu, or by right-clicking the system tray icon and selecting options.

The folders that are displayed to the user are configured in the first tab of the option’s menu. Here it is possible to configure menus and folders that are displayed when the folder menu is opened.

Folders can be placed in the root level, or in menus. The program pre-configures all drives and user folders so that these are already accessible after installation.

The Preferences tab configures the program further. It is possible to configure when and how the program menu is shown in Save As and Open dialog boxes, in Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer and the desktop.

Filters can be configured that offer fast filtering of files in Save As and Open dialog windows.

folder menu

Chameleon Folder is an unobtrusive, helpful program for the Windows operating system, especially for users who work regularly with specific folders in Windows Explorer.

It is not the most lightweight of programs but still acceptable for most computer systems. The software is available for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows. Downloads are provided at the developer website.

The .spotlight-v100 and .trashes folders were created automatically by an Apple Macintosh computer system that the USB flash drive was plugged in before. These two folders are automatically created whenever a USB flash drive is connected to a computer system running an Apple Mac operating system. Spotlight is a indexing process on the Mac that will save the information that are gathered in the .spotlight-v100 directory.

The .trashes folder on the other hand is simply a trash folder for the specific drive which is also created by Apple Macintosh computer systems. Windows users can simply delete both hidden directories to free up disk space.

There is however no need to worry that these two folders have been created by malicious software.

New Folder Wizard is a portable software program for the Windows operating system. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0, runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the operating system and can be downloaded directly from the developer’s homepage. The software itself comes with a set of interesting features to aid the user in the folder creation process.

The configuration of the software is handled in the main interface. The user needs to select a target folder which becomes the root folder for the folders that are created. It is furthermore possible to add folder prefixes and suffixes, starting and ending numbers and steps for those numbers.

Another option is to load a text file containing names into the program to create folders based on these names. The process can be previewed so that the user knows how the folders will be named. The generated folder names can be copied to the clipboard for external processing.

New Folder Wizard is an interesting lightweight application for the Windows operating system.

Update: The developer website is no more. We have uploaded the latest working file version to our servers. You can download New Folder Wizard from here: New Folder Wizard (1079)

It can for example be used by P2P users to move all the files that are located in subdirectories in the download folder to the main download folder to get better and faster access to the files. Other possibilities are to move photos that have been transferred from a digital camera into one main folder as these photos are usually stored in subfolders named after the date they have been taken.

Suction is a portable software program for the Windows operating system that supports drag and drop and context menu operations. It will automatically move all files that are located in subfolders into the main folder. The subfolders will be removed in the process so that the root folder will only contain all files that have been located in subfolders.

The user can either drag and drop a folder into the application’s interface or right-click a folder after activating the context menu option in the program’s options. Duplicate files will either be renamed automatically by the software program or deleted automatically.

Watch 4 Folder is a lightweight software program to monitor folders in Windows. The program can be configured to monitor one main folder for the following six different types of changes:

• file name changes
• directory name changes
• attribute changes
• size changes
• last modification date changes
• security changes

It can furthermore write all changes to a log file and execute a script or program if changes are detected. The computer program uses less than 4 Megabytes of computer memory while running. The developer did not include a list of compatible operating systems. It worked fine in Windows XP SP3 and will probably work as well in older and newer versions of the Windows operating system.

The portable software program has been designed by Donation Coder member Miles Ahead. It is a compiled AutoHotkey application which means some antivirus programs might identify it as a false positive. The program remembers the 24 most recent folders of the Windows operating system and provides easy access to them when needed.

It will sit quietly in the Windows system tray for most of the time and can be activated by pressing the keyboard shortcut [Shift Page UP]. This will open the main program window displaying the most recently opened folders.

The most recent folders are located at the top. A double-click on any folder will open it in a new Windows Explorer window. It takes a second or two to open the folder meaning the delay is noticeable but still way faster than having to open the folder manually in Windows Explorer again.

There are a few aspects that might be worth changing. The delay should be investigated and if possible reduced to speed up the process. It would be nice if the software developer would add preferences to the computer program. Thinking of settings to change the number of recorded folders. Another interesting feature would be the addition of permanent folders in the interface that the user could add.

Folder Cache is a lightweight tool for users who work (a lot) with Windows Explorer.

This can be handy in situations where files usually land in an upload directory with limited space or to automatically transfer files from a directory to another on the computer’s hard drive. P2P users might also like the idea of moving finished downloads from the download directory to another directory.

Move Out uses rules that specify names and extensions that should be moved automatically from monitored folders to others. The process of setting up rules does not take long with the changes taking effect immediately. The user configuring the rules has to add a source and destination folder as well as names and file extensions that should be moved and optionally those that should be ignored. Wildcard usage is possible with the easiest being *.* which will move all files that appear in the source folder to the destination folder. File replacement rules can be set as well in case a file with the same name exists in the destination folder.

The program will check for matching files every three seconds by default. This value can be changed in the options of the program to in case a faster or slower speed is required.

Whatever it is sorting them automatically is probably the wiser choice than performing that task manually. I Like To Move It is a small portable software program for the Windows operating system that can automatically move files and folders to another location. A ini file is used to define the rules. Thankfully it is usually only once necessary to edit the ini files to suit individual needs. Files and folders will be separated by default. All folders are moved with the files they are containing to the location and placed into a main _folders directory. The files on the other hand are moved based on rules defined in the ini of the program.

About 20 different file extensions are already defined in the ini files. It will for instance move multimedia files into appropriate folders. This includes audio files like mp3 or ogg into the audio folder or doc and pdf files into the document folder. Executable files are handled differently as the program recognizes files like ini or cmd files that belong to that executable file. These will also be moved.

It is possible to add additional extensions easily in the ini that can either be placed in one of the existing folders or into a new one. Files will be overwritten by default if they are found in the destination folder. This can also be changed in the ini. The process of moving does not take long and the application can be closed after the process has finished.

Visual Subst is one of the few software programs out there that can associate folders with drives. The portable application can be run from any location and saves the information in an ini file so that the changes can be reloaded after restarting Windows.

The interface is pretty self-explanatory. The user picks a free drive letter from the list of available ones and selects a folder that should be associated with it. The folder is then accessible through the drive letter as well which can be quite handy for certain tasks.

Visual Subst ist compatible to Windows 2000, Windows XP and newer operating system which would include Windows Vista.

Disk Index lists all available drive letters in its program window and additional information about the currently selected drive below that. This information changes when a new drive letter is selected.

The user has to specify a log file which the information will be written to. It will write additional information in the header of the text document including disk size, containing files and folders.

Disk Index works perfectly fine on Windows XP Service Pack 3. There is no information regarding compatibility with other systems.

Disksum does not compete with them. It’s an ultra efficient tool that displays the biggest and largest folders on the command line. All you need to do is put it into the root folder that you want to analyze and run it.

It scans the folder and displays the values of every subfolder directly in the command line.

The output begins with the sizes of each folder and a second part that is displaying the very same folders sorted by file count and total size. Could come in handy in a few situations. The app is portable.

The free software BX New Folder (download)adds a system wide shortcut to create folders in Windows Explorer quickly. The F12 key can be used to create a new folder in Windows Explorer quickly. A menu pops up after pressing the F12 key that displays the current folder and provides a form field where the user can enter the new folder name.

The new folder will be opened directly in Windows Explorer if the user is pressing the Shift key during creation.

I would not run the application all of the time but it does come in handy if multiple folders have to be created, especially if a complex folder structure has to be created.

No third party software or add-on is needed for this little tip that saved me lots of time over the years. All you need to do is to press the CTRL key and left-click the folders that you want to close. Once all folders have been selected right-click the last and select Close Group from the menu.

This closes all the selected folders at once. This works pretty well with other windows and can be used to quickly close multiple programs that reside in the taskbar as well and it is even possible to mix applications and folders.

It comes with a clean interface that requires minimal user input; basically only the source folder and the destination are required before hitting the Start button of the software. All subfolders of the selected source folder are processed automatically. A name for the destination folder can be selected as an option, it’s New Folder by default.

The program options provide several advanced features like copying only files that have a certain file extension, deleting the files in the source folder, renaming existing files and moving the files instead of copying them.

The authors homepage is hard to navigate which is why I link to the file directly and to the homepage. It’s a pretty solid application that comes in handy for users who clean up some folders regularly by moving files into other folders.

Windows does not have that function build in, that’s for sure but I was able to discover the software Folder View which, among other functions, comes with a folder history. The application basically adds another toolbar to Windows Explorer that provides fast access to selected folders on the computer’s hard drive.

This is pretty useful as well but I mainly use it because of its recent folders option that displays a list of the recently closed folders. A click on one of the folders would open the folder again making it possible to continue working with it.

Direct Folders adds a double-click menu that gives the user access to folders,files and recent documents that he has added to the application before. The system is so simple that I would call it brilliant. A double-click opens the Direct Folders menu when you are in Windows Explorer, Windows desktop or a file browsing dialog (like Save or Load) and opens a folder or file with just another click.

Several items can be added to the menu. First of all direct access to folders and files can be added on the main level. Separators can be used to visualize folder categories or add a break between folders and files. Last but not least subfolders can be created that add another level to the menu meaning in return that you need another action to access the folders or files contained within.

Several other file related settings can be changed in Direct Folder. The default size of the file dialogs windows can be changed to an appropriate size as well as the default viewing mode (Thumbnails, Icons, Details, Tiles and List), the sort order (Name, Size, Type and Date) and if it should be ascending or descending.

The folder and file favorites as well as the recent documents can also be accessed by shortcuts. The default shortcuts are Windows Q for the Favorites and Windows W for the recent documents.

A pro version is available as well which adds several new functions like information about the size of a drive, the ability to set default folders for any application and an option to customize folder icons.