Access file properties without context menu(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              In order to see the properties of a folder or a file, you have to first rightclick with the mouse on the symbol and open the context command ‘Properties’. You want to see the information in a quicker way.
              How to get the information you want faster: Select the entry or the icon of the desired file or folder. Then, press the key combination [Alt]+[Enter]. Thereafter, Windows opens the dialogue ‘Properties’, without you having to go through the context menu of the file. If you prefer to work with the mouse, you can still avoid using the context menu by keeping the [Alt] key pressed while you double click on the icon of a file or folder.

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Sort files automatically by type(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

                When downloading photos, music and programs, you collect all data in a common download folder, and then you normally sort them manually depending on the file type.

                Collecting all files in one common download folder is a good start. You can then easily automate the next step of sorting with the free tool Download Mover. A download of the somewhat old but user friendly tool is available at www.ntworks.net/download-mover. html. Unzip the downloaded file in a new folder. Further installation is not required.
                After starting it, configure the desired rules. Near the combination field ‘watched directories’, click ‘new’, and then navigate to the download folder and activate it with ‘OK’. Basically, any number of folders can be considered. Then click ‘new’ in ‘files to move’. Specify a type e.g. ‘zip’ or ‘jpg’ and click ‘next’. Now navigate to the target folder that must have been already created. Confirm the selection with ‘OK’. In the same way, define the rules for the other data types. This also works when sorting the available folders.
Note: The functionality cannot be integrated into the system. But you can establish a link in the auto-start folder and thus automate the process.

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Ascertain the cause of nondeletable files and remove them(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

            When cleaning the hard disk, you bump into files and folders that cannot be deleted. You want to know what is blocking access so you can release the files for deletion.

            Mostly, access by another program is the cause for causing a file to become non-deletable. Windows unfortunately does not provide any information about it. The limit is when you get the message ‘The file is being used by another person or program’. That’s as useless as the message ‘Close all programs that are using this file, and repeat the process’. The free tool UnlockIT (emcosoftware. com/unlock-it) determines the corresponding program and enables deleting the specific file.
             After the quick installation, start the tool. Click the selection arrow under the ‘Browse’ icon and decide whether you want to look into a ‘File’ or a ‘Folder’. Then navigate to the desired entry and confirm the selection with ‘Open’ or ‘OK’. The tool will now show you whether a block exists, and lists the programs that cause it. Check the details so that you do not delete important files. For instance, an open Office document causes even the relevant folder to be blocked. If you want to remove a block, right click the program in the list and try to remove the existing blocks via ‘Close Handles’. This is safe to a large extent as no processes are ended. Only when this doesn’t work should you end the application, which you can do via the ‘Kill Processes’ command in the next step. The element can then be deleted.

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Reuse search requests in Windows Explorer(Windows 7)

              You often enter search requests with the same search terms and settings in Explorer. The repeated execution of these requests is annoying and takes just too much of time.
              In order to solve this problem, open Windows Explorer with [Win]+[E]. On the left side of the window, navigate to the desired drive or folder in whose substructure you want to look for files. Enter the search term in the input field to the upper right corner. The OS comes up with results even as you enter the search term and the number of hits in the list reduces with every alphabet that you type.
              You can also refine your search by entering more criteria. For this, click in the input fields and select the ‘Type’, ‘Date Modified’, ‘Size’, ‘Name’ and/or ‘Folder location’ links in the following menu. Another menu or a dialog box is displayed in which you can select the desired limitations. In case of just ‘Name’ and ‘Folder location’, you need to enter the searched character string right after the colon in the search request. Wildcards such as ‘*’ are unnecessary since Windows lists all results containing the search term. If you are unable to see any of the specified options, move the cursor to the left border of the input field, click, keep the mouse button pressed and drag and increase the size of the field.
              Click ‘Save Search’ in order to save the search request that you have just defined for reusing. You can find the command in the toolbar right below the address field. In the next dialog box, name the search and ‘Save’ it.
               Windows manages your search requests with the ‘.search.ms’ file extension under your profile in the ‘Searches’ folder. In order to repeat the search, just double click the entry of this saved file in Windows Explorer.

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