Specifications

CHAPTER 1
Customizing
Windows Explorer
IN THIS CHAPTER
. Returning the Menus to Their
Rightful Place
. Changing the View
. Viewing More Properties
. Turning On File Extensions
. Stopping Delete Confirmations
. Running Explorer in Full-
Screen Mode
. Exploring the View Options
. Moving User Folders
. Taking Ownership of Your Files
. Running Custom Searches
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Although I’m sure you’ve got countless more important
things to do with your precious time, at least some of your
Windows 7 face time will be spent dealing with files,
folders, and other Windows “f-words.” These file system
maintenance chores are the unglamorous side of the digital
lifestyle, but they are, regrettably, necessary for the smooth
functioning of that lifestyle.
This means that you’ll likely be spending a lot of time with
Windows Explorer over the years, so customizing it to your
liking will make you more efficient and more productive,
and setting up Windows Explorer to suit your style should
serve to remove just a bit of the drudgery of day-to-day file
maintenance. This chapter takes you through a few of my
favorite Windows Explorer customizations.
Returning the Menus to Their
Rightful Place
Microsoft seems to hate pull-down menus, for some reason.
Over the past few years, Microsoft has hidden the menu
system in many programs, and gotten rid of it altogether in
Office 2007 (although the old menu keystroke combina-
tions still work). In those programs where the menus are
merely hidden, you can display them at any time by tapping
the Alt key. This works in Windows Explorer, too, and that’s
a good thing because Windows Explorer’s pull-down menus