4 ms·

I won't try to defend their execution, but I think they're trying to solve a legitimate issue. It's really confusing to an end-user if they see two Documents fo

I won't try to defend their execution, but I think they're trying to solve a legitimate issue. It's really confusing to an end-user if they see two Documents folders. And I'm certain that I've personally encountered instances where both Documents folders had the Documents special folder icon (though I'm not sure if I've seen this on Win10, specifically)

jplayer01 8y ago
Maybe just fix that bug instead of deleting user data? Just a thought.
- gruez 8y ago
  It's not even a bug
  - jplayer01 8y ago
    You don't think it's a bug when two folders get the same special icon that one usually associates with one specific location? That's a huge UI bug.
    - gruez 8y ago
      >two folders get the same special icon Nope, I just tested, only 1 folder gets the special icon.
      - jplayer01 8y ago
        I've seen it a lot over the years. Literally two folders side-by-side with the same name and same icon and questionably the same path but are two different folders. I even had it on a customer's PC just last week. Don't know what else to say.
        colemickens 8y ago
        I'll chime in here with +1. It's why I refuse to mess with KFR anymore. Wound up in a situation with multiple directories with the same name appearing, with different file contents, with different behavior depending on how you accessed it. Kept coming back despite not being how I'd configured KFR. It was a fucking nightmare. Nothing like staring at what is supposed to be a filesystem view and seeing things that make no sense. You're not alone. It's been a bit reassuring that others run into these things. I figured maybe I was just "holding it wrong".
tcfunk 8y ago
I ended up in this situation upgrading from 7 to 8 to 10 (not sure which transition was the culprit).
solarkraft 8y ago
I have two Documents folders. It's fucking confusing. But I'd think it shouldn't have been possible for them to exist in the first place. Windows Explorer is a mess.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  I've run into this on a bunch of systems, and it absolutely is a mess. Particularly since Explorer gives all kinds of special status and UI elements to 'Documents' folders - if they just had the same name in different places I'd care way less. But the solution to "we screwed up years ago" is definitely not "nuke one instance with no warning and don't even glance at what's there".
  - colemickens 8y ago
    It's basically the only reason I didn't lose a bunch of data from this bug as an Insider - the "Libraries" and special "My Documents" folders are so damn messy and have caused me data loss at other times, that I stopped using it and manage things myself. Another lovely one, for ages (probably still) OneDrive would purge it's local copy whenever you turned it off or uninstalled it. That was probably one of the most frustrating things that Windows has ever done to me. Edit: Lord, can we please talk about "3D Objects" too? Who the hell got promoted for shoving that down everyone's throat in half a dozen places? Every week I get an update I have to run a regedit script to remove all the bullshit they've shoved into Explorer for absolutely no reason.
    - Bartweiss 8y ago
      `Libraries` and `My Documents` an absolute mess, agreed. I've given up and just work from a personal folder that serves the exact same role but doesn't have any special Windows status, which is a pretty serious indictment of those "helpful" features. A sincere question: why are you an Insider? After the Windows 8.1 issues I'd be really gunshy about getting early anything for Windows. Are there upsides to that, or is it pretty much just a public service in the same sense as running nightly Firefox builds?
manigandham 8y ago
So move/merge the locations since that is clearly the intention if the user has a redirection setup. A simple message confirming that "there are 2 Documents folders and would you like to move them to a single location" would be sufficient. This is just a project management failure that somehow got through, but the fact that it did seems to show major QA issues.
- cesarb 8y ago
  Merging the locations can easily get complicated. What if the same file exists in both folders? What if it exists in both folders, but with different contents? What if not only it has different contents, but also the same last modification time?
  - manigandham 8y ago
    Why is it complicated? It's no different than moving any other folder to a new location which already has one with the same name, something that has been handled for decades now. It should be the same exact action, just triggered by a message saying "Documents folder detected in 2 locations, click OK to copy".
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

jplayer01 8y ago

Maybe just fix that bug instead of deleting user data? Just a thought.

gruez 8y ago
It's not even a bug
- jplayer01 8y ago
  You don't think it's a bug when two folders get the same special icon that one usually associates with one specific location? That's a huge UI bug.
  - gruez 8y ago
    >two folders get the same special icon Nope, I just tested, only 1 folder gets the special icon.
    - jplayer01 8y ago
      I've seen it a lot over the years. Literally two folders side-by-side with the same name and same icon and questionably the same path but are two different folders. I even had it on a customer's PC just last week. Don't know what else to say.
      - colemickens 8y ago
        I'll chime in here with +1. It's why I refuse to mess with KFR anymore. Wound up in a situation with multiple directories with the same name appearing, with different file contents, with different behavior depending on how you accessed it. Kept coming back despite not being how I'd configured KFR. It was a fucking nightmare. Nothing like staring at what is supposed to be a filesystem view and seeing things that make no sense. You're not alone. It's been a bit reassuring that others run into these things. I figured maybe I was just "holding it wrong".

tcfunk 8y ago

I ended up in this situation upgrading from 7 to 8 to 10 (not sure which transition was the culprit).

solarkraft 8y ago

I have two Documents folders. It's fucking confusing. But I'd think it shouldn't have been possible for them to exist in the first place. Windows Explorer is a mess.

Bartweiss 8y ago
I've run into this on a bunch of systems, and it absolutely is a mess. Particularly since Explorer gives all kinds of special status and UI elements to 'Documents' folders - if they just had the same name in different places I'd care way less. But the solution to "we screwed up years ago" is definitely not "nuke one instance with no warning and don't even glance at what's there".
- colemickens 8y ago
  It's basically the only reason I didn't lose a bunch of data from this bug as an Insider - the "Libraries" and special "My Documents" folders are so damn messy and have caused me data loss at other times, that I stopped using it and manage things myself. Another lovely one, for ages (probably still) OneDrive would purge it's local copy whenever you turned it off or uninstalled it. That was probably one of the most frustrating things that Windows has ever done to me. Edit: Lord, can we please talk about "3D Objects" too? Who the hell got promoted for shoving that down everyone's throat in half a dozen places? Every week I get an update I have to run a regedit script to remove all the bullshit they've shoved into Explorer for absolutely no reason.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    `Libraries` and `My Documents` an absolute mess, agreed. I've given up and just work from a personal folder that serves the exact same role but doesn't have any special Windows status, which is a pretty serious indictment of those "helpful" features. A sincere question: why are you an Insider? After the Windows 8.1 issues I'd be really gunshy about getting early anything for Windows. Are there upsides to that, or is it pretty much just a public service in the same sense as running nightly Firefox builds?

manigandham 8y ago

So move/merge the locations since that is clearly the intention if the user has a redirection setup. A simple message confirming that "there are 2 Documents folders and would you like to move them to a single location" would be sufficient. This is just a project management failure that somehow got through, but the fact that it did seems to show major QA issues.

cesarb 8y ago
Merging the locations can easily get complicated. What if the same file exists in both folders? What if it exists in both folders, but with different contents? What if not only it has different contents, but also the same last modification time?
- manigandham 8y ago
  Why is it complicated? It's no different than moving any other folder to a new location which already has one with the same name, something that has been handled for decades now. It should be the same exact action, just triggered by a message saying "Documents folder detected in 2 locations, click OK to copy".
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]