In essence, a computer has only one task, the processing of information. Directly related to this is the activity of managing that information, ie saving, copying, moving, sharing and deleting. Windows offers the Explorer for this, but it is not very user-friendly and has hardly been improved in many Windows versions. We show how file management can be improved.
Tip 01: What is a file?
Information is stored on the computer in files. Every Word document is a file, just like any digital photo or video. But a file is not really a file until it is stored on the computer, on the network (nas) or somewhere in the cloud. In Windows 10, every file has an extension, the few letters after the dot of the file name. For example, all Word documents contain .doc or .docx extensions, all Excel files contain .xls or .xlsx and many photos contain .jpg or .png or .tiff. These are the best-known extensions, but there are many more, mostly unknown ones. These are often system files that only the computer can do something with.
Tip 02: Explorer
Such files on your computer rarely stay exactly as they are. You probably want to move, copy, rename, delete, ... All these actions fall under the file manager and Windows has the Explorer for that. Remarkably, this important part of Windows is not in the Start menu, but you can find it on the taskbar. To open the Explorer, click on the yellow folder icon on the taskbar or use the Windows key + E key combination. The Explorer consists of two panes. The narrow part on the left lists all locations where files can be stored on the PC. If you click on such a location with the mouse, Windows will show the contents of that drive or folder in the right pane. These can be files, but also folders containing other folders or files.
Make extensions visible
If you see file names but no extensions, their display is disabled. Logical, because Windows disables that by default, although that is not very useful in view of security. To enable the extensions display, open Windows Explorer. Then click File / Folder and Search Options / View and in the list of options uncheck Hide extensions for known file types.
The Explorer hasn't changed in all those 25 years, except for a few cosmetic changes Tip 03: Renewal?
The Explorer has been in the operating system since Windows 95 and, except for a few cosmetic adjustments, has actually not changed in all those 25 years. As if the way we handle files has not changed! But what about the enormous growth in the number of files that we have on the PC and the use of the cloud or a nas to also be able to access our files in other places? It actually all passed the Explorer. Although, according to the rumours, Microsoft is now working on a new Explorer, it is not there yet. Nor is it known what it will offer and whether it will be a completely new Explorer or just an update of the current one.
If you have the latest version of Windows 10 (minimum version 1903), you can already get started with the possibly new version of the Explorer. Open File Explorer and type the following string in the address bar: shell:AppsFolder\c5e2524a-ea46-4f67-841f-6a9465d9d515_cw5n1h2txyewy!App and press Enter. The Explorer opens a new Explorer screen with a completely different look. This is the new Explorer according to the universal apps design with which Microsoft builds apps for all platforms at the same time. To use this Explorer more often, right-click on the Desktop and choose New / Shortcut. In the new window, type the command explorer shell:AppsFolder\c5e2524a-ea46-4f67-841f-6a9465d9d515_cw5n1h2txyewy!App and confirm with Next one. Then give the link the correct name, for example NwExplorer, and click Complete.
UWP explorer
The discovery of the new Universal Windows Platform Explorer in Windows 10 sparked the wildest rumors. Is this the new Explorer everyone has been waiting for, or is this Explorer suitable for all universal app platforms: Windows 10, Windows Server 2019, Xbox One and Hololens? At the moment, the exact position of this 'alternative explorer' is somewhat uncertain. The Universal Windows Platform is part of Windows 10 and all related Microsoft platforms and intended to be able to develop apps for all these platforms simultaneously. On a device with a touch screen, such as a Windows tablet or a laptop with touch controls, this UWP explorer is therefore very useful. However, for use on the PC, this Explorer clearly offers too little functionality and display options. We therefore suspect that this is not the long-awaited new Windows Explorer.
Tip 04: Sets
According to Microsoft, the most requested functionality from Windows users for the Explorer is tabs. Known from all browsers and a great way to open multiple pages at once, it would also solve the limitation that the Explorer can only show the contents of one folder at a time. This makes it difficult to compare, copy or move files between two or more locations. And so Microsoft developed Sets. Sets makes all Windows programs, including the Explorer, suitable for tabs and it should come in 2018 with a major update in Windows 10. But Sets doesn't come.
Users testing future versions of Windows through the Windows Insider Preview program didn't like it. This was mainly because Microsoft once again wanted to do more than what users wanted, and allowed them to open completely different data and programs in those tabs in addition to a second window of the same program. It turned into chaos. The development of Sets has been stopped and it is clear that we do not have to rely on Microsoft for tabs in the Explorer for the time being.
Windows users prefer to see tabs in File Explorer Tip 05: Alternatives
If you still want to do effective file management in a different way, there are many alternative solutions. These fall into two groups. The first group installs software that adjusts the operation of all applications, but where you continue to use Windows Explorer. The second group installs an alternative program for the Explorer. The second group is the largest, because there is a huge range of Explorer alternatives.
The best known of these is Total Commander (TC) which has been around for quite a few versions. TC is shareware and free to use for 30 days, after that an unlicensed nag screen (pop-up asking to buy the program) will appear on startup. The strength of these types of programs is that they work with two panes that display different file locations. Within those panes, you'll see the folders and files that you can select and then copy or move between the two panes (locations). This makes file management very clear and because these types of programs can be operated completely with the keyboard, very quickly.
Alternatives include Midnight Commander, Altap Salamander, MultiCommander, and Double Commander.
Tip 06: Fast file management
The operation via the keyboard of Total Commander and its many followers is often identical. Alt+F1 changes stations in the left pane, Alt+F2 does the same in the right pane. Use the arrow keys to scroll through the lists of folders and files and select one by pressing the spacebar. You can expand selections endlessly and also extract previously selected folders or files. If you want to copy files from one window to another, select the appropriate files and press F5 to copy them or F6 to move them. By switching between the two panels with Tab, you determine the direction of a copy or move action. View a file with F3, edit with F4.
The program can handle a large number of files including archive and backup formats such as zip, arj and rar. Useful options are comparing and synchronizing folders, and searching with Alt+F7. The search function is very powerful with full text support, so you can search by features, in a limited number or all subfolders. You can create a new folder via F7, you can also rename a file with F6 and delete a file with F8. If you want, you can of course also do everything with the mouse, but if you are used to the keys and key combinations, you will soon not want anything else.
Tip 07: Tabbed Explorer
What Microsoft failed to do, others can. Explorer++ is a version of the Explorer that includes tabs to have multiple locations with folders and files open at the same time. Much is identical to Windows Explorer, with the address bar at the top, the folder list on the left, and the files and folders in the selected folder on the right. Unlike Total Commander, Explorer++ mainly uses the mouse to select files and copy them between two places or perform a different file manager.
To open a folder in a separate tab, right-click it and choose Open in new tab or you use Ctrl+Enter. Furthermore, for selecting and editing files, you mainly use mouse actions or keys and key combinations as in Windows. The convenience of the tabs is that in one tab you copy a selection of files with Ctrl+C, open the other tab and copy the files there with Ctrl+V, without having to open the window with the location where the files come from. , need to leave.
Groupy is an addition to Windows that provides the entire operating system with tabs Tip 08: Tabs everywhere
Groupy is yet another alternative. It is admittedly not a file manager, but an addition to Windows that tabs the entire operating system, much like Microsoft will have intended with Sets. Groupy costs six dollars, but you can try it for thirty days first. Once installed, you can open multiple File Explorer windows, all via Windows Key+E, and then group them together by dragging them together. Besides windows of the same program, you can also all add other windows together.
Two Explorer windows, Word and Excel in one group: no problem. The grouped tabs appear above the title bar. If you don't want windows to be merged, hold down Ctrl. You can set new windows of the same program to be grouped by default via the Settings. Something that can also be very useful: you can save grouped windows as a group and then easily open them again with one click.
The Windows 3.1 file manager
Windows 95 brought the Explorer, before that there was File Manager, an even less useful program for managing files and folders. This classic, best known for screenshots, has been brought back to life by Microsoft. In the Microsoft Store within Windows 10 you will find the File Manager, an app version of the old File Manager.
Tip 09: Cmd and PowerShell
An often forgotten way to manage files, and in some cases certainly the fastest, is the Command Prompt (cmd). And because PowerShell, the Windows scripting environment, has the same commands, it is also very useful. Search via Start on cmd, command prompt or power shell. With the drive letter followed by a colon and Enter you switch to another hard drive or attached network drive. Of CD, followed by the folder name, switches to a folder on the same drive. Of mkdir make a folder. Of dir if you see the contents of a folder, create there dir /A:H from, you will also see the files that are hidden by default.
You can change the name of a file via rename, followed by the old and the new file name, including the extension, rename oldname.txt newname.txt. Other useful commands are move, to move files and erase, to delete files, just like del Moreover. The question mark (?) and the asterisk (*) are wildcards that you can use to select multiple files at once.
