Vista - Column - Customize

Hello Jonricho,

Using Method One in OPTION THREE in this tutorial should allow you to change the pixel width for any selected column that you want.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks Shawn, quick response appreciated.

Afraid your solution doesn't work. On my Vista Business system, if you type any figure less than 80 in the Width of selected column (Size), it does not accept it.

Another solution is required. In XP you could drag the column width to any that you want, which you can also in Vista, AS LONG AS IT IS MORE THAN 80 PIXELS. Hope you can advise

I see you what you mean now. Yes, it appears that 80 pixels is as low as Vista will allow you to go for a column width. There is no way around this as far as I know.

Thanks again - I still hope there is a a solution lurking somewhere in the registry or an ini file. But am rapidly losing it (hope)!

Hopefully Windows 7 will not have such a limit. Maybe you can use your MVP status to suggest this to MS. And if you're on the blower to MS, perhaps also say that one of the things I value most about Vista Explorer is the "dancing folders column" which relocates depending where you are in the folder hierarchy. This saves substantial screen real estate. I hope they can keep it, at least optionally, in Windows 7, but have read on one blog that it has been killed.

I would tell them myself, but need Windows Live, which I have tried 3 times to join and failed each time.

Regards
Jon

The same 80 pixel limit is in Windows 7 to. I'll continue to look for a way to bypass this, but I think that it may be something that is hard coded in the OS.

I'm not sure what you mean though by "dancing folders column".

That is strange that it failed to to sign you up for a Windows Live ID. Did you have cookies enabled, and any messages why?

Thanks again. Sorry to hear 7 has continued Vista's approach re column width. Maybe its time I moved to a third party program such as Total Commander or Cubic Explorer.

Dancing folders is how I describe the folders pane in Explorer, which relocates the tree depending where you are in the hierarchy. Thus if you move to a lower level, all the folder icons move to the left, if you move to a higher they move to the right, thus letting you see only the level of folders that you are interested in. This allows the lefthand pane in Explorer to remain narrow, and still allows easy movement between levels. It would be shame if 7 killed this off. It was a very clever development in Vista, but some newsletter writers profess not to like it.

Windows Live: Always the same message (again this morning, though I came at it a different way - signing up for hotmail, to see if that helped - it didn't). Message read today:
We're fixing a temporary problem with Windows Live ID sign-up.
Please try again.
If you continue to get this error try again later.
OK Error code: 100 : 0x800482de : 2009-07-09T23:31:16 GMT

Always the same or similar message - now 4 times in 2 months or so. Help appreciated. Sorry to take your time.

Rgds Jon

Actually, I think Windows 7 has improved apon the folder tree even more. You can see what I mean at these two links below.

Navigation Pane - Automatically expand to current folder - Windows 7 Forums

and

Navigation Pane - Show All Folders - Windows 7 Forums

I would ask the question about Windows Live in the Windows Live forum for more specific help with that though.

Thanks for this - it was very helpful as I do mostly technical work with music files, and the default view is nothing like what I need. Now if they'd only fix the problem with Vista forgetting half the last used folder settings, I'd be content. Is there some upper limit to the number of folders Vista keeps settings for, as someone suggested elsewhere?
Tony P

Hello Tony, and welcome to Vista Forums.

You can apply METHOD THREE in the tutorial below to help have Vista remember the folder view settings.

Windows Explorer Folder View settings

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks for your suggestion, Shawn. I was skimming late last night looking for quick fixes. The 35-step procedure for cleaning up the registry -- I presume that's the Method 3 you were pointing me to -- looked a bit intimidating , so I put if off until after I'd done the quick general fix for all music folders. That almost worked -- I opened one folder that still had the default columns. I do have SP2, so that evidently didn't fix the general problem. Sigh...

Tony P