First, open the Folder Options window, turn on the View tab, turn on the
Remember each folder??™s view settings option, and click OK. Thereafter,
Windows Explorer will temporarily save the settings for roughly 30 of the
Customize Windows Explorer | 31
Shell Tweaks
most recently viewed folders. Most of the time, these saved settings override
your saved defaults. But how do you change the defaults?
Your choices are stored in the Registry (discussed in
Chapter 3) rather than in the folders themselves, which not
only explains the limit on the number of folders Explorer can
remember, but exposes a rather annoying flaw in the system.
Say you choose the view settings for a folder called
Lenny. When you close and reopen Lenny right away, your
settings will remain. However, if you rename the Lenny folder
to, say, Karl, it will instantly revert to Explorer??™s defaults and
forget the settings you made only seconds earlier.
If you??™re tired of constantly having to go back to Explorer??™s View dropdown
to change the icon size, or having to click the column headers to sort
file listings, you can set your own defaults. But Explorer??™s use of your
defaults won??™t make much sense until you figure out Vista??™s clandestine
template system.
A template is a collection of folder display settings that includes the view (e.g.,
Large Icons, Details, etc.), the sorting method, and the columns displayed.
Each time you open a folder, Vista automatically picks one of the five preset
templates, and uses those settings to configure the view.
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