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Display All Special Folders In Windows With Special Folders View

Martin Brinkmann — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:17:33 +0000

Special folders in the Windows operating system are presented to the user abstractly, they are not represented by their folder path but solely by their function. Examples of special folders are the My Documents or My Music folders in the user directory, application data folder, the desktop or the temporary Internet files folder.

Special folders are either a reference to an existing system folder or a virtual folder. The main usability advantage is that Windows users do not have to remember folder paths, just the name of the special folder. This concept makes it easier to move between operating systems. Even if the folder structure changes, the special folders are still accessible the way they were before.

Special Folders View is a portable application by Nirsoft. The program is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

The program displays a list of all special folders of the computer system. Folders are listed by name, state (hidden, read only, system), path, CSIDL and CDIDL name.

special folders view

Selected, or all folders can be exported into a text document, csv file or html file. It is further possible to generate a html report.

A right-click on a folder displays additional options. The context menu can be used to open the folder in Windows Explorer, open the folder properties, copy the folder path or create a shortcut pointing to the special folder on the desktop.

A double-click on an item will also launch the selected folder in Windows Explorer.

Special Folders View is a handy portable tool to have around. It can be downloaded from the Nirsoft website.

Windows Operating Systems Special Folders View

Martin Brinkmann — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:33:10 +0000

Windows operating systems come with several special folders that have been designed by Microsoft for the purpose of easier access. The My Documents and Desktop special folder are examples. Many users do not know where to find these special folders in the folder hierarchy as they access them directly from the start menu and by using shortcuts. The underlying concept reminds users with the technical knowledge of symbolic links. The special folders concept will advance to a next level in Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 7 which will offer so called libraries to the user. Libraries have the advantage that they can be linked to multiple folders on the operating system. Helpful for users who store photos and images in various locations on the computer system.

Special Folders View is a Nirsoft application. This means it is a high quality, portable application for the Windows operating system. The purpose of the computer software is to display all special folders of the active operating system. The information that are displayed include the name of the special folder and its location on the computer’s hard drive.

It will also display more technical information like the class id, class id name and if the folder is hidden or not. The main use is to that the program provides an overview of the special folders and their place in the folder hierarchy. A double-click on any entry will open that folder on the computer system. This could make it a tad easier for computer technicians to find those folders faster. The usual options to export the list to various formats including xml and html are offered.

Move Special Folders like My Documents to a different path

Martin Brinkmann — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 16:05:17 +0000

If you want to move folders that are automatically created by windows xp on your c: drive to another path or folder you might face a problem. Simply moving the folders won’t work which means there must be another way to relocate them. The easiest way that I’ve come up with is to use the freeware called Folder Redirector which makes it simple and fast to redirect the following folders to a different folder or drive on your system.

It works on Desktop, Favorites, My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, Send To, Shared Documents, Shared Music, Shared Pictures, Shared Video, Start Menu, Startup, Temporary Internet Files, Common Startup and Common Desktop. I can think of two occurrences where relocating such folders would be a good idea. The first one would be if your c: drive does not have that much space and you want to remove everything that reduces space on that drive.

A second option would be if you dislike the default folder structure, why did they add Documents and Settings to the root folder of the windows partition ?

Back to the tool itself, as I said it is very easy to use. You pick the folder that you want to move to a new location and browse to that new location afterwards. (or type it in manually) Once done you click apply and the path will be changed. The 17K tool even features a backup routine to backup the files if you want to be on the safe side before moving them.

The restore default option turns everything back to the way it was at the beginning.