Richard said:
I've tried various work-arounds over the last year or two but I've
still not found a program that will achieve what I would have thought
would be a fairly popular requirement.
With a set of Windows XP folders positioned and sized as I like on my
desktop, I want to be able to save that layout. Then, at any later
time I want to be able to restore exactly the same layout.
Of course, one or more of the folders might have been moved, resized,
minimised or even closed by then, so the program would have to open,
size and position them again.
I'm surprised that so far I've been unable to find anything, but live
in hope!
Note that I'm talking about folder, not icon layouts, for which there
seem to be dozens of programs.
Hi Terry,
Check these:
Folder Options > General
[*] Use Windows classic folders
[*] Open each folder in its own window
Folder Options > View
[*] Remember each folder's view settings
Thanks Richard. Yes, all of that understood and used regularly.
All the folders that I have resized and positioned appear correctly. If you
don't resize or move them, they should appear in the same place the next
time they are opened.
But that 'If' is the big issue! Take a typical example. I regularly
work with maps, for which I set up 10 XP folders, neatly arranged to
allow easy access for file opening, drag and drop copying/moving,
deletions, etc. But I don't keep these open at their original
positions and sizes and viewing modes, even within a single day.
Deliberately or accidentally some will get changed in one way or
another. And for sure some will be minimised while I work on other
stuff. Even if ALL I did was minimise some/all of them, to re-open all
10 in their original layout would take up to 10 clicks after opening
the list from the drop down in the grouped tray item (which as I
compose this is currently '15 Windows Explorer').
That's all on the same day the folders were set up. Now consider the
situation a week or month later when not only their
sizes/positions/viewing modes may have been changed but none of them
are now likely to be even OPEN. I may have just finished another type
of work, say 'DVD-making' and now want to switch to 'Map work'.
Map work was just one 'task type'. I probably need layouts for a
dozen.
To get a layout exactly like the original all folders must be opened
in succession, so that they appear on top of anything else on the
desktop. So your batch approach looks promising and I'll explore it
further. But even if XP can be relied upon to re-open
size/position/view mode exactly as they were at the time the folder
was closed (and I'm sure I've encountered occasions when it apparently
didn't) then the batch method again relies on nothing having been
changed. Remember, some of these folders may be opened individually at
times during the intervening period, and work done with them that may
change size/position/view mode.
To open more than one folder at the same time, you can
use a simple BATCH file script:
start C:\WINDOWS\Temp
start C:\Docume~1\Richard\Locals~1\Temp
exit
I put the above in OpenFolders.bat, and with 1 of the 2 folders closed, and
the other minimized, both appeared correctly sized and positioned where I
last left them. I had to use the short names for "Documents and Settings"
and "Local Settings" to get it to work. OK, I just tried it again with one
closed and the other maximized, and both appeared normal size in their
correct position, not maximized. That's as far as my batch writing skills
can go. Have you asked in Visual Basic or C++ newsgroups?
Not yet, but that's a good idea, thanks.
The closest I've got so far is to use Macro Express Pro to write a
unique macro for one task (my map work). In this I've tediously
hard-coded the position/size of each folder so that the macro can
restore these when I run it. As a plus, this allows me to include
PROGRAMS in the layout, as well as folders, such as Google Earth,
Memory-Map and GPS Utility. But the downsides of inflexibility and
set-up effort are serious. One improvement would be to write a 'save
macro' that helps create the 'restore macro' by identifying its size
and position. But it looks hard work!
Note that I didn't mention viewing mode in the above para. Until now I
sort of disregarded that, as it's an added complication. But it's
interesting that you specified
[*] Open each folder in its own window
I've always had that set to
[*] Open each folder in the same window
so that I don't end up with 50 folders instead of 15. But if your
option keeps the view mode reliably set (as it was when closed) that
may be worth the effort of remembering to Shift-click when opening.
Best wishes,
