Folder Options View Settings Confusion

For as long as I can remember I've been baffled by the 'Folder options' on
the View menu of folders in Windows (I have Windows 98). I've never been
able to get it to work the way I would like, so I've more or less tolerated
its behavior and put up with it. Nor have I been able to find a decent
explanation anywhere of what exactly some of those options do, either from
Microsoft or from the countless Windows support websites I have visited over
the years. I'm not sure if I just don't understand the way it's supposed to
work, or if the program is just not functioning the way it's supposed to.
Maybe someone on a discussion group somewhere can help me out.

First of all, I would like the view in all of my folders to look exactly
alike one another. My preference is the 'List' view. Under 'Folder Options'
on the 'View' tab, in the section 'Folder Views', it says 'You can make all
your folders look the same' along with a button labled 'Like Current Folder'.
But the semantics here are vague and ambiguous. Does this 'look like'
pertain to the 'Large Icons'--'Small Icons'--'List'--'Details' settings...or
something else? No matter how often I have tried to make all of my folders
present me with the 'List' view by using this button, it fails. Even for the
particular folder which was open and from which I tried to make this setting,
I will often come back to this folder later after some change has been made,
and the 'Large Icons' will have reappeared. Then again, if I change the
view to 'List', it doesn't seem to have any effect on subfolders of the
folder I make the change to. If I want the subfolders to have the 'List'
view, I have to go through each of them and manually make the change...which
of course, will subsequently disappear when any change is made to the
contents of the folder. Exasperating, to say the least. But I have put up
with it, while wasting a lot of time clicking on view option settings. The
associated help tip which pops up when you drop the '?' on the button seems
to mean that by clicking on it, all of the folders on my computer will be
forced to have the same view settings as the ones I have set in the current
window. No such luck!

More ambiguity: In the 'Advanced settings' window of this tab, there is a
checkbox for 'Remember each folder's view settings', and for as long as I can
remember I have had this checkbox 'set'...but it seems to have absolutely no
effect upon retaining the settings I want. The associated help tip which
pops up when you drop the '?' (help) on it seems to indicate that it should
do just that--but it doesn't!

Also under these 'Advanced settings', there is a section for 'Managing pairs
of Web pages and folders' which gives you a set of choices (radio buttons).
For these particular settings, all you get when you drop the '?' on them is
the pop up 'No Help topic is associated with this item'. Great. I guess
it's supposed to be clear what is meant by each of the choices, but it
certainly isn't to me. My initial assumption was that they are referring to
Web pages which are 'saved' as 1) an HTML file, and 2) the folder which has a
similar name and contains images, etc. I save a lot of Web pages for
reference and leisurely offline viewing, and initially I saved them as the
'pair'--file and folder. But because of the way in which folders and files
are organized within a folder, it was inevitable that I would inadvertently
allow the file and folder to get separated and 'lost' from one another when
organizing and moving them around from folder to folder and drive to drive.
Then I discovered how to save the Web page as a single (MIME-encoded) file
(having the .mht extension and which Microsoft refers to as 'Web-archive'
format). This more or less solved my problem of losing the 'folder'
associated with the HTML file. Later on, I discovered the 'Managing pairs of
Web pages and folders' section which seems to offer the option of managing
the 'pair' in several ways. But again, there appears to be ambiguity without
sufficient explanation to resolve it. For example, the first choice listed
says 'Show and manage the pair as a single file', and the third choice says
'Show both parts but manage as a single file'. (?). For the life of me, I
can't distinguish these 2 choices. The second choice, 'Show both parts and
manage them individually' appears to be the 'default' that I was originally
saddled with. I don't remember if this radio button was the one originally
checked, but currently I have the first choice selected--'Show and manage the
pair as a single file', but I suspect that doesn't work the way I think it
should since my earliest 'saves' as the file-folder pair still get
'separated' inadvertently (i.e. they have to be managed individually). So,
either these options do not work as it seems, or they do not mean what I
think they do.

One reason I bring this up is that for some time now I have been considering
using Firefox instead of IE. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a cursory reading
of the Help files for Firefox seemed to indicate that Firefox (v.2.0) does
not save Web pages in the single-file, MIME-encoded .mht format, and I would
hate to give that up, given the number of Web pages I save (and manually
manage). I'm not sure if Firefox has provisions, as IE seems to have (even
though they appear not to work) for handling Web pages in a unified, clean
way. Even with all of its problems, I would probably stick with IE simply
because of the choices it gives with regard to saving Web pages--if I could
get it to do what I think it should do. So it anybody out there can clarify
the situation for me, it would be greatly appreciated.
--
little nemo in slumberland

"littlenemo" wrote in message
news

First of all, I would like the view in all of my folders to look exactly
alike one another. My preference is the 'List' view. Under 'Folder
Options'
on the 'View' tab, in the section 'Folder Views', it says 'You can make
all
your folders look the same' along with a button labled 'Like Current
Folder'.
. . . No matter how often I have tried to make all of my folders
present me with the 'List' view by using this button, it fails. Even for
the
particular folder which was open and from which I tried to make this
setting,
I will often come back to this folder later after some change has been
made,
and the 'Large Icons' will have reappeared. . . .

More ambiguity: In the 'Advanced settings' window of this tab, there is a
checkbox for 'Remember each folder's view settings', and for as long as I
can
remember I have had this checkbox 'set'...but it seems to have absolutely
no
effect upon retaining the settings I want. The associated help tip which
pops up when you drop the '?' (help) on it seems to indicate that it
should
do just that--but it doesn't!

These well-known bugs in Win98 EXPLORER seem to
persist in WinXP. This is one of the reasons some users
prefer other PC browsers, e.g. PowerDesk, which are more
stable and add a few extra functions (e.g. F-key shortcuts
for Copy to, Move to etc.)

For the Internet browser, Firefox has fewer options than
IE. Most users have chosen it for security reasons (Mozilla
software is the target of malware much less often than MS.)
My Firefox is adequately fast on my 2.8 GHz PC but on a
1.3 GHz PC (under WinXP) IE is appreciably faster.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

"littlenemo" wrote in message
news
For as long as I can remember I've been baffled by the 'Folder options' on
the View menu of folders in Windows (I have Windows 98). I've never been
able to get it to work the way I would like, so I've more or less
tolerated
its behavior and put up with it. Nor have I been able to find a decent
explanation anywhere of what exactly some of those options do, either from
Microsoft or from the countless Windows support websites I have visited
over
the years. I'm not sure if I just don't understand the way it's supposed
to
work, or if the program is just not functioning the way it's supposed to.
Maybe someone on a discussion group somewhere can help me out.

First of all, I would like the view in all of my folders to look exactly
alike one another. My preference is the 'List' view. Under 'Folder
Options'
on the 'View' tab, in the section 'Folder Views', it says 'You can make
all
your folders look the same' along with a button labled 'Like Current
Folder'.
But the semantics here are vague and ambiguous. Does this 'look like'
pertain to the 'Large Icons'--'Small Icons'--'List'--'Details'
settings...or
something else? No matter how often I have tried to make all of my
folders
present me with the 'List' view by using this button, it fails. Even for
the
particular folder which was open and from which I tried to make this
setting,
I will often come back to this folder later after some change has been
made,
and the 'Large Icons' will have reappeared. Then again, if I change the
view to 'List', it doesn't seem to have any effect on subfolders of the
folder I make the change to. If I want the subfolders to have the 'List'
view, I have to go through each of them and manually make the
change...which
of course, will subsequently disappear when any change is made to the
contents of the folder. Exasperating, to say the least. But I have put
up
with it, while wasting a lot of time clicking on view option settings.
The
associated help tip which pops up when you drop the '?' on the button
seems
to mean that by clicking on it, all of the folders on my computer will be
forced to have the same view settings as the ones I have set in the
current
window. No such luck!

More ambiguity: In the 'Advanced settings' window of this tab, there is a
checkbox for 'Remember each folder's view settings', and for as long as I
can
remember I have had this checkbox 'set'...but it seems to have absolutely
no
effect upon retaining the settings I want. The associated help tip which
pops up when you drop the '?' (help) on it seems to indicate that it
should
do just that--but it doesn't!

Also under these 'Advanced settings', there is a section for 'Managing
pairs
of Web pages and folders' which gives you a set of choices (radio
buttons).
For these particular settings, all you get when you drop the '?' on them
is
the pop up 'No Help topic is associated with this item'. Great. I guess
it's supposed to be clear what is meant by each of the choices, but it
certainly isn't to me. My initial assumption was that they are referring
to
Web pages which are 'saved' as 1) an HTML file, and 2) the folder which
has a
similar name and contains images, etc. I save a lot of Web pages for
reference and leisurely offline viewing, and initially I saved them as the
'pair'--file and folder. But because of the way in which folders and
files
are organized within a folder, it was inevitable that I would
inadvertently
allow the file and folder to get separated and 'lost' from one another
when
organizing and moving them around from folder to folder and drive to
drive.
Then I discovered how to save the Web page as a single (MIME-encoded) file
(having the .mht extension and which Microsoft refers to as 'Web-archive'
format). This more or less solved my problem of losing the 'folder'
associated with the HTML file. Later on, I discovered the 'Managing pairs
of
Web pages and folders' section which seems to offer the option of managing
the 'pair' in several ways. But again, there appears to be ambiguity
without
sufficient explanation to resolve it. For example, the first choice
listed
says 'Show and manage the pair as a single file', and the third choice
says
'Show both parts but manage as a single file'. (?). For the life of me,
I
can't distinguish these 2 choices. The second choice, 'Show both parts
and
manage them individually' appears to be the 'default' that I was
originally
saddled with. I don't remember if this radio button was the one
originally
checked, but currently I have the first choice selected--'Show and manage
the
pair as a single file', but I suspect that doesn't work the way I think it
should since my earliest 'saves' as the file-folder pair still get
'separated' inadvertently (i.e. they have to be managed individually).
So,
either these options do not work as it seems, or they do not mean what I
think they do.

One reason I bring this up is that for some time now I have been
considering
using Firefox instead of IE. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a cursory
reading
of the Help files for Firefox seemed to indicate that Firefox (v.2.0) does
not save Web pages in the single-file, MIME-encoded .mht format, and I
would
hate to give that up, given the number of Web pages I save (and manually
manage). I'm not sure if Firefox has provisions, as IE seems to have
(even
though they appear not to work) for handling Web pages in a unified, clean
way. Even with all of its problems, I would probably stick with IE simply
because of the choices it gives with regard to saving Web pages--if I
could
get it to do what I think it should do. So it anybody out there can
clarify
the situation for me, it would be greatly appreciated.
--
little nemo in slumberland

The view options are designed to make all of your folders look the same when
you open them. If the current folder has Details selected then you get the
Details view for all.
That having been said, IIRC there is a limit on the number of folders that
can be set using the View settings

BD

Don--

I have never run across any discussion of these 'well-known bugs' in the
thousands of tips and solutions to problems I have seen on Windows support
sites or forums. I couldn't find anything in the Microsoft Knowledge Base
either. I think I may have occasionally seen a passing reference to such
bugs here and there, but no discussion of solutions or fixes. If the problem
persists even into XP, why hasn't Microsoft bothered to fix it? I have read
about add-ons such as Windows Power Toys and Tweak UI, but I'm not familiar
with them--do they perhaps have a solution to these 'bugs'? If you know the
location of any in-depth discussion of the problem, could you direct me to
it? I have Googled and browsed high and low and cannot find anything
regarding it.
--
little nemo in slumberland


"Don Phillipson" wrote:

These well-known bugs in Win98 EXPLORER seem to
persist in WinXP. This is one of the reasons some users
prefer other PC browsers, e.g. PowerDesk, which are more
stable and add a few extra functions (e.g. F-key shortcuts
for Copy to, Move to etc.)
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

BD--

That's my problem BD--That view setting that sets all folder to look like
the current one simply doesn't work. If there is an upper limit to the
number of folders that can be set that way, perhaps you could tell me what it
is. As far as I know the feature has not been working right from the
beginning (when I had far fewer folders). Is there some way of finding out
how many folders I have on my computer, short of some kind of brute-force
approach? By the way, I'm not familiar with 'IIRC'--what does it mean?
--
little nemo in slumberland


"BD" wrote:

The view options are designed to make all of your folders look the same when
you open them. If the current folder has Details selected then you get the
Details view for all.
That having been said, IIRC there is a limit on the number of folders that
can be set using the View settings

BD

[SNIP]



More ambiguity: In the 'Advanced settings' window of this tab, there
is a checkbox for 'Remember each folder's view settings', and for as
long as I can remember I have had this checkbox 'set'...but it seems
to have absolutely no effect upon retaining the settings I want.
The associated help tip which pops up when you drop the '?' (help) on
it seems to indicate that it should do just that--but it doesn't!


[SNIP]

I don't know if this will solve the problem but on my Explorer setup
"Remember each folder's view settings" is unchecked, and I recall this as
being necessary to finally be able to get the "Like Current Folder" clickbar
to have its intended effect. So once you uncheck that you would then need to
click a folder in the Explorer tree, then single click a file on the right,
then click the preferred view that you want from the four choices in the
dropdown View menu, then click "Like Current Folder". Not much downside in
trying it.

I use a very old version of Powerdesk myself. Not perfect, but no problems
in the areas where you are having difficulty.

Roger Fink wrote:
[SNIP]



More ambiguity: In the 'Advanced settings' window of this tab, there
is a checkbox for 'Remember each folder's view settings', and for as
long as I can remember I have had this checkbox 'set'...but it seems
to have absolutely no effect upon retaining the settings I want.
The associated help tip which pops up when you drop the '?' (help) on
it seems to indicate that it should do just that--but it doesn't!


[SNIP]

I don't know if this will solve the problem but on my Explorer setup
"Remember each folder's view settings" is unchecked, and I recall
this as being necessary to finally be able to get the "Like Current
Folder" clickbar to have its intended effect. So once you uncheck
that you would then need to click a folder in the Explorer tree, then
single click a file on the right, then click the preferred view that
you want from the four choices in the dropdown View menu, then click
"Like Current Folder". Not much downside in trying it.

I use a very old version of Powerdesk myself. Not perfect, but no
problems in the areas where you are having difficulty.

Note that the "Like Current Folder" setting applies to other properties
besides the four settings in the View menu. Before you click it, you can set
the file categories displayed, their order, and their size, by right
clicking the bar in the right hand pane. Whatever adjustments you make
should get picked up in the system next time you open up Explorer.

1. Click Start Settings Folder Options View tab.
Uncheck (clear) the box for "Remember each folder's view settings" and click OK.

2. If you have TweakUI installed, click Start Settings Control Panel TweakUI.
Click the Explorer tab, uncheck (clear) the box for "Save Explorer window settings",
and click OK.

3. Open only one instance of Windows Explorer, to C:
Click View menu List (or whatever view you want), and also adjust any other view
settings as you want them, such as the file-type order.
Hit the F5 key.
Click the View menu Folder Options (or Tools menu Folder Options), then click the
View tab.
Click the "Like Current Folder" button, and click OK.
Close Explorer by holding down the CTRL key while clicking the X in the upper right
corner (Do NOT use File menu Close). You *must* hold down the CTRL key while
closing the Explorer window.


If you still have trouble, first backup your Registry:
click StartRun, type: scanregw
|click OK|
When prompted, say Yes to backing up the Registry.

Then open the Registry Editor (StartRunRegedit) and navigate to this key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

Look for a value in the right-hand pane named "NoSaveSettings"
If found, right-click "NoSaveSettings" and click Delete.
Close Regedit, and then run through procedure #3 above, again.

If you still need help after that, have a look here, on MVP Ron Badour's web site:
http://home.satx.rr.com/badour/html/tips_a_-_d.html

Scroll down to:
CHANGING ICON DISPLAY DEFAULT IN DUAL-PANE WINDOWS
and
CHANGING ICON DISPLAY DEFAULT IN SINGLE-PANE WINDOWS
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Shell/User, A+
AumHa VSOP: http://aumha.net
DTS-L.ORG: http://66.39.69.143/


"littlenemo" wrote in message
news
For as long as I can remember I've been baffled by the 'Folder options' on
the View menu of folders in Windows (I have Windows 98). I've never been
able to get it to work the way I would like, so I've more or less tolerated
its behavior and put up with it. Nor have I been able to find a decent
explanation anywhere of what exactly some of those options do, either from
Microsoft or from the countless Windows support websites I have visited over
the years. I'm not sure if I just don't understand the way it's supposed to
work, or if the program is just not functioning the way it's supposed to.
Maybe someone on a discussion group somewhere can help me out.

First of all, I would like the view in all of my folders to look exactly
alike one another. My preference is the 'List' view. Under 'Folder Options'
on the 'View' tab, in the section 'Folder Views', it says 'You can make all
your folders look the same' along with a button labled 'Like Current Folder'.
But the semantics here are vague and ambiguous. Does this 'look like'
pertain to the 'Large Icons'--'Small Icons'--'List'--'Details' settings...or
something else? No matter how often I have tried to make all of my folders
present me with the 'List' view by using this button, it fails. Even for the
particular folder which was open and from which I tried to make this setting,
I will often come back to this folder later after some change has been made,
and the 'Large Icons' will have reappeared. Then again, if I change the
view to 'List', it doesn't seem to have any effect on subfolders of the
folder I make the change to. If I want the subfolders to have the 'List'
view, I have to go through each of them and manually make the change...which
of course, will subsequently disappear when any change is made to the
contents of the folder. Exasperating, to say the least. But I have put up
with it, while wasting a lot of time clicking on view option settings. The
associated help tip which pops up when you drop the '?' on the button seems
to mean that by clicking on it, all of the folders on my computer will be
forced to have the same view settings as the ones I have set in the current
window. No such luck!

More ambiguity: In the 'Advanced settings' window of this tab, there is a
checkbox for 'Remember each folder's view settings', and for as long as I can
remember I have had this checkbox 'set'...but it seems to have absolutely no
effect upon retaining the settings I want. The associated help tip which
pops up when you drop the '?' (help) on it seems to indicate that it should
do just that--but it doesn't!

Also under these 'Advanced settings', there is a section for 'Managing pairs
of Web pages and folders' which gives you a set of choices (radio buttons).
For these particular settings, all you get when you drop the '?' on them is
the pop up 'No Help topic is associated with this item'. Great. I guess
it's supposed to be clear what is meant by each of the choices, but it
certainly isn't to me. My initial assumption was that they are referring to
Web pages which are 'saved' as 1) an HTML file, and 2) the folder which has a
similar name and contains images, etc. I save a lot of Web pages for
reference and leisurely offline viewing, and initially I saved them as the
'pair'--file and folder. But because of the way in which folders and files
are organized within a folder, it was inevitable that I would inadvertently
allow the file and folder to get separated and 'lost' from one another when
organizing and moving them around from folder to folder and drive to drive.
Then I discovered how to save the Web page as a single (MIME-encoded) file
(having the .mht extension and which Microsoft refers to as 'Web-archive'
format). This more or less solved my problem of losing the 'folder'
associated with the HTML file. Later on, I discovered the 'Managing pairs of
Web pages and folders' section which seems to offer the option of managing
the 'pair' in several ways. But again, there appears to be ambiguity without
sufficient explanation to resolve it. For example, the first choice listed
says 'Show and manage the pair as a single file', and the third choice says
'Show both parts but manage as a single file'. (?). For the life of me, I
can't distinguish these 2 choices. The second choice, 'Show both parts and
manage them individually' appears to be the 'default' that I was originally
saddled with. I don't remember if this radio button was the one originally
checked, but currently I have the first choice selected--'Show and manage the
pair as a single file', but I suspect that doesn't work the way I think it
should since my earliest 'saves' as the file-folder pair still get
'separated' inadvertently (i.e. they have to be managed individually). So,
either these options do not work as it seems, or they do not mean what I
think they do.

One reason I bring this up is that for some time now I have been considering
using Firefox instead of IE. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a cursory reading
of the Help files for Firefox seemed to indicate that Firefox (v.2.0) does
not save Web pages in the single-file, MIME-encoded .mht format, and I would
hate to give that up, given the number of Web pages I save (and manually
manage). I'm not sure if Firefox has provisions, as IE seems to have (even
though they appear not to work) for handling Web pages in a unified, clean
way. Even with all of its problems, I would probably stick with IE simply
because of the choices it gives with regard to saving Web pages--if I could
get it to do what I think it should do. So it anybody out there can clarify
the situation for me, it would be greatly appreciated.
--
little nemo in slumberland