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Windows Vista User Interface >> Manage files with the brand-new Vista-Explorer (Sort, Group, Search, Stack)

This article gives away some of the new features of the Windows-Explorer that has been integrated into Windows Vista: It is no longer a simple user interface for copying, moving or renaming files and folders. You’ll get interesting possibities with preview-panes, a new search mechanism and a couple of ways to visually arrange your data.

QuickSearch
In the upper right corner of each and every Windows-Explorer you’ll see the “Search” box. Just type in a phrase or a word and Windows Vista gives you (thanks to the indexing functionality) the results almost instantly.

QuickSearch in Windows-Explorer

Use “Search Tools/Search Pane” to show more options. Your results can be filtered using the categories of this search pane (“E-mail”, “Document”, “Picture”, “Music” and “Other”). With the “Other”-filter Windows Vista browses for all non-recognizable file types. Interesting for a lot of users out there: Even objects such as E-Mails or contacts are included in the results which makes the search feature more useful than in the past!

You are also given the oppurtunity to save a specific search query just by clicking on “Save Search”. For example, you can save a search for pictures in the “D:\Vacation\USA 2006” folder on your desktop. If you double-click on this search folder all the files will be displayed instantly. Additionally, these folders are dynamic and that means that if you add new pictures or subfolders to the “USA 2006” folder the saved search includes these automatically in the results shown when you open the search folder.

An adapting explorer
Depending on the content of folders, Windows-Explorer changes its options accordingly. For example, if you navigate through a folder containing pictures you’ll get the options “Preview”, “Slide Show”, “Print”, “E-Mail” and “Burn”.
Using “Preview” you can open a picture in any installed editing-application (e.g. PhotoShop, PhotoImpact, Windows Photo Gallery). With the help of the “Burn” shortcut you are free to create a DVD with slideshows, videos, background musik and a complete menu for your DVD-Player using “Windows DVD Maker”.

Task pane for pictures

Show the preview pane
If you want to know what is in a file without ever opening it, you’ll find great pleasure with the preview pane! It shows you the content of a variety of file types (such as pictures, documents and e-mails) within Windows-Explorer. To activate it, just click on “Organize/Layout/Preview Pane”. .

Preview Pane

On the bottom of your Windows-Explorer you’ll discover a wide range of file information depending on the type (e.g. Author, tags, date, comments). You are able to edit this information just by clicking on the element once. For example, for all the pictures in a folder you can add tags such as “Summer, vacation, 2006, desert, rental car”. Using the Windows Vista Search (“Start menu/Search”) you are easily able to show the “Advanced Search” and search for these tags. Let’s take another example: You can add tags to a certain type of document (e.g. invoices) that are located in a bunch of different folders and locations on your hard disk. But you can always use search, type in the tag (e.g. “invoice”) and have all your documents in one place. Of course, you might want to save this search using Windows-Explorer and access these results anytime! You see, all the features of the new Windows-Explorer in Vista come together and allow for an intelligent organization of data!

Add tags to your files and make them easier to find!

Stack, Sort and Group
Especially in folders with a large quantity of files (in our case we take a large music folder) you’ll lose the clear view pretty fast. Now what? Windows Vista gives you three choices. Let’s get started with the first one, “Sort”. In your Windows-Explorer you’ll find the categories “Name, Artist, Album or Genre”. If you click on the small arrow right next to “Genre” you can choose between several music styles (e.g. Rock, Classic, Pop”) which narrows down your search immensely.

Use the sort feature to filter out music styles

In the same menu you’ll find the next organization feature planted into Windows Vista, “Stack”. Just click on the arrow next to a category and select “Stack by Genre” (for example). If you scroll down, you will notice some new blue-colored stacks that are carrying the name of the different genres.

Stack by different criterias

Right next to the menu option “Sort” you will also find our final option, “Group”. The Windows-Explorer splits the content of a folder into different groups. For example, if you click on “Name/Group” (in a music folder), explorer splits all files and folders into “0-999”, “A-D”, “E-H” (etc.).

We hope you’ve learned a little bit about the new organization capabilities build right into the new generation of Windows Explorer in Vista and that you are able to organize and find your files more easily in the future...