Guest JustSomeGuy Posted August 29, 2007 Posted August 29, 2007 In Windows Explorer's View\Choose Details dialog, there are numerous additional viewable folder property fields available for use beyond the usual "name, size, type, date modified". You can check their boxes as desired, to get different or additional columns when you View Details on a folder. Just wondering if there's a way to rename some of these additional column names to something more useful, such as, renaming "Owner" to "First" and renaming Category to "State" and renaming Attributes to "Phone". Because then you can create a new empty notepad file for each employee in your company, using their last names for the file names. Then, store the first name, state, and phone number in those additional file properties for each file. You end up with a "Company Phone Directory" folder which, when openend by anyone on the network, displays your entire corporate phone directory. The advantage is that everyone in the company can open that folder simultaneously and click on any column to sort the whole directory by last, first, phone, state, etc. whatever way each individual person wants, without affecting anyone else's preferred view/sort order. Why make everyone launch a complete program like Excel or Word, consuming a lot of precious RAM on innumerable desktop PCs, just to access a file that can only be edited by one person at a time, when instead you can instantly and constantly publish the whole phone directory using nothing more than Windows Explorer itself, letting everyone have simultaneous full access to all the data, displayed any way each individual wants, with one click? Being able to rename the columns for that folder would, of course, be a nice touch. Nevertheless, you can still use this idea; just ignore the Windows-standard column titles. The end result is being able to sort the whole 'phone directory' with one click on any column header by last name, first name, state, phone number, etc for for lightning fast lookups. This same concept works for any kind of workgroup-shared 'list'. Only minor hassle: rolling it out to the workgroup, each person has to know how to go into that folder and check the appropriate additional file property check boxes on their own computer, to get the 'phone directory' columns to display on their PC...the column setups are stored in their own user settings somewhere, not in the 'phone directory' folder itself. But that's not a big show-stopper. Posted FWIW in case it helps somebody...
Guest Mark F. Posted August 29, 2007 Posted August 29, 2007 Re: Custom Detail View column headings in Explorer? "JustSomeGuy" <JustSomeGuy@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:D81D181B-21E5-4F08-8ACF-625695AED2B2@microsoft.com... > In Windows Explorer's View\Choose Details dialog, there are numerous > additional viewable folder property fields available for use beyond the > usual > "name, size, type, date modified". You can check their boxes as desired, > to > get different or additional columns when you View Details on a folder. > > Just wondering if there's a way to rename some of these additional column > names to something more useful, such as, renaming "Owner" to "First" and > renaming Category to "State" and renaming Attributes to "Phone". > No. The ListView header labels are not customizable that way. > Because then you can create a new empty notepad file for each employee in > your company, using their last names for the file names. Then, store the > first name, state, and phone number in those additional file properties > for > each file. You end up with a "Company Phone Directory" folder which, when > openend by anyone on the network, displays your entire corporate phone > directory. The advantage is that everyone in the company can open that > folder simultaneously and click on any column to sort the whole directory > by > last, first, phone, state, etc. whatever way each individual person wants, > without affecting anyone else's preferred view/sort order. > > Why make everyone launch a complete program like Excel or Word, consuming > a > lot of precious RAM on innumerable desktop PCs, just to access a file that > can only be edited by one person at a time, when instead you can instantly > and constantly publish the whole phone directory using nothing more than > Windows Explorer itself, letting everyone have simultaneous full access > to > all the data, displayed any way each individual wants, with one click? > If you share a file on a drive. Everyone can open are read the file at that same time. They are looking at a instance of the file so there should be no depreciable loss of anything (RAM, Resources, bandwidth, etc.) other than normal desktop activity. Also, the likelyhood of everyone opening the file at the same time is remote. > Being able to rename the columns for that folder would, of course, be a > nice > touch. Nevertheless, you can still use this idea; just ignore the > Windows-standard column titles. The end result is being able to sort the > whole 'phone directory' with one click on any column header by last name, > first name, state, phone number, etc for for lightning fast lookups. This > same concept works for any kind of workgroup-shared 'list'. > > Only minor hassle: rolling it out to the workgroup, each person has to > know > how to go into that folder and check the appropriate additional file > property > check boxes on their own computer, to get the 'phone directory' columns to > display on their PC...the column setups are stored in their own user > settings > somewhere, not in the 'phone directory' folder itself. But that's not a > big > show-stopper. > > Posted FWIW in case it helps somebody... BTW: Do you use MS Office? If so, you can download a Address Book database for Microsoft Access for free. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/results.aspx?qu=address+book&av=TPL000 All you have to do is enter the info and drop the .mdb file in a shared folder. Mark
Guest Bob W Posted August 30, 2007 Posted August 30, 2007 Re: Custom Detail View column headings in Explorer? Good to know. But this missess the whole point; the original idea requires nobody to install and learn how to use Access, or any other program, to get the same lookup/sort functionality. > BTW: Do you use MS Office? If so, you can download a Address Book database > for Microsoft Access for free. > http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/results.aspx?qu=address+book&av=TPL000 > > All you have to do is enter the info and drop the .mdb file in a shared > folder. > > Mark > > >
Guest Mark F. Posted August 30, 2007 Posted August 30, 2007 Re: Custom Detail View column headings in Explorer? "Bob W" <BobW@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:64A2C288-87BB-46A3-8196-45A5302BFAD7@microsoft.com... > Good to know. But this missess the whole point; I understood the point, and I also stated that what JustSomeGuy wants to do cannot be done, so I offered an alternative. > the original idea requires nobody to install and learn how to use Access, > or any other program, to get > the same lookup/sort functionality. > I disagree mainly because the work is already done for you. The database, the forms, report views, everything! All you have to do is enter the information in it. Creating an Access database has a considerable learning curve, using one does not. Such applications are more professional and less prone to problems. Not to mention the flexibility. Using text files for business workplace information is an archaic, and rather poor method of storing information such as employee. If you have spent the (large amount of) money on software such as Office, why not use it? IMO Mark
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