Add Metadata to folders in XP?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
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Guest

Hi

XP/SP2

I've got a selection of 30 folders that I cannot rename due to their
position in an automated process. However, they are named sequentially, which
is not intuitive so i have to constantly refer to another computer across RDP
to remind myself what each one is.

I reasoned that adding somekind of tag or information to the folders would
allow me to write what each contains alongside the folder name. I've seen
there is a "Keywords" column available in Explorer, and added it, but don't
know to add anything to it, and wonder if it is just for images. If anyone
knows how to add meta data or similar to folders and can let me know it would
save me about 20 minutes a day!

Thanks in advance

Adrian
 
Have you heard of "reparse points"? This is Windows's mechanism of creating
symbolic links. A symbolic link is a directory entry that's actually a link
to some other directory in the file system. You could create meaningful
symbolic links for each of these folders. They would appear in Windows
Explorer as shortcuts.

First, download the junction.exe utility here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/Junction.mspx

Then, create junctions for each folder. For example:

junction <friendly-name-1> <unintuitive-folder-1>
junction <friendly-name-2> <unintuitive-folder-2>

And so on. Note that your "friendly names" don't have to have numbers or
even reflect the sequence of the original names. Now, when you need to work
with the files in these folders, you can use your new friendly names. In
Explorer, just click on the new folder names.

A few points to keep in mind:

* When creating the junction, specify the full path name for the friendly
name. It has to be on the same computer as the original folder, but not
necessarily the same drive volume.
* You might consider creating a folder off the root, and put the junctions
there. For instance, "C:\_MY SYMLINKS". I've put an underscore at the
beginning so that it'll appear at the top of the list in Explorer.
* Caution! Junctions have the full power of the original folders. If you
type "del <friendly-name-1", then you're really deleting
<unintuitive-folder-1>. To get rid of a junction, use the "junction -d"
command.

Maybe this will work for you.
 
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