7 ms·

It’s funny for what is essentially a ‘file manager’ Microsoft makes it hell to manage your files. My friends and family and constantly confused by the 10 differ

It’s funny for what is essentially a ‘file manager’ Microsoft makes it hell to manage your files. My friends and family and constantly confused by the 10 different interfaces there are for file management. Desktops are a mess of of half trash files. The cloud integration the file explorer is a confusing mess. The UI for saving a file from Office is the absolute worst. I’ve had to help someone just save a file and it was difficult even for me to figure out the UI — borderline comical how bad it is.

mixmastamyk 4y ago
So depressing because Explorer from the 2k/XP era was best in class and about as complete and discoverable as a shell ever got.
- sodapopcan 4y ago
  XP was the best OS and I miss it. You had to switch it to use the classic 95/97/2000 skin, of course :) I haven't used Windows since.
  - mixmastamyk 4y ago
    The shell yes. Lack of a decent terminal would sink it—besides the other reasons it is not suitable any longer... software support and security concerns. Reply edit: Guess you could putty into Linux, but not worth the hassle at that point.
    - sodapopcan 4y ago
      Oh right. I was writing spaghetti PHP in those days so never had use for a terminal, so I guess that is required context.
    - Dagger2 4y ago
      bash in mintty is pretty decent. mintty can do some things better than many terminals on Linux, even: https://mintty.github.io/mintty-gnuplot.png https://mintty.github.io/mintty-gnuplot.png
      - mixmastamyk 4y ago
        Believe I've seen that, come to think of it. Does a featureful version support XP? How did they work around the console limitations of older Windows?
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    What made you dislike Windows 7?
    - mey 4y ago
      Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 were both very good operating systems. My memory is hazy, but I feel like Windows XP didn't really hit it's stride until SP 1 or 2, when USB really stabilized.
      - CRConrad 4y ago
        IIRC, XP SP3 was the canonical “use this” version.
    - sodapopcan 4y ago
      Sorry, that was very misleading wording on my part. I started a job where they gave me a Linux machine that was lying around. When it was clear I was going to stay they said I could get whatever I wanted. I was going to get a Windows machine but since everyone else was on a Mac (and it was the time when the 27" iMac was brand new) I decided to follow suit and that's what I've been on ever since.
    - mixmastamyk 4y ago
      That's when the Explorer and task bar started getting convoluted, hiding things, and becoming abstract instead of concrete. It's done in the spirit of helping newbies of course but it actively harms folks who do understand, as well as crippling the newbies who might learn, to always be dependent. Also, the transparent effects didn't help anything and look silly in hindsight. They also took out color customization and you couldn't have a dark theme for the next ten years! Of course the type ahead search in the Start menu was a big improvement, and elevation for security. But as always one step forward, two steps back with modern Windows.
mihaaly 4y ago
Agreed. That OneDrive thingy my company foolishly employs is making the file ""manager"" only bigger, not better. One of my favourite is how it overrules me in renaming a file. Half way into renaming it decides I will not rename it and just clears my editing, or exits editing mode. Refreshes or something, ruining what I do along the way. Renaming files is a hit or miss thing, unpridictable. Something pretty essential thing solved pretty well more than half a century ago, managed to be ruined by MS.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  The business version of onedrive is just a shell around SharePoint which has a bunch of awkward character restrictions. This is the cause of that. I don't use consumer onedrive but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't do this.
- jcparkyn 4y ago
  > Half way into renaming it decides I will not rename it and just clears my editing, or exits editing mode. In case you're curious what's actually going on here, it happens when one of the status symbols (e.g uploading or synced) on a file in the same folder changes, which causes the view to refresh and the text box to be cleared. That's why it happens much more often when renaming multiple files. I remember finding a bug report about it years ago, with lots of people complaining about it and no response from MS. Infuriating.
dahwolf 4y ago
Same for "My Documents". If they are mine, then why are 7 trillion programs and processes dumping their random garbage in it? Or how about Modern office programs, where saving something to disk instead of the cloud is now many clicks away.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Because the KPIs for the OneDrive product managers is based on usage. They have to break your workflow for their bonus.
Loughla 4y ago
My number 1 complaint after switching from linux mint back to windows after years in linux-land after building a gaming rig - The auto sort by date and group by most recent in their file explorer that you have to either use a third party app to turn back into sort by name and group by none, or - do that selection for literally every folder on its own. That's a fucking train wreck. Who decided that sorting by date instead of name was a good idea? WHY?
- vel0city 4y ago
  > Who decided that sorting by date instead of name was a good idea? It depends on the context. Sometimes when I'm looking at photos, I really do prefer sorting by date. Similarly, when I'm looking at the Downloads folder, I'm probably most interested in the thing I just downloaded, so having that near the top makes a lot of sense and would gladly prefer that than having it sorted alphabetically. However, if I'm just looking at a directory of documents, alphabetical wins for sure. If I'm looking at a music collection, I'd probably want to sort by artist name alphabetically, but not necessarily filename.
- thewebcount 4y ago
  I can kind of understand making it the default sort, but not getting rid of the others. Most users don’t know they can sort the list of things in a folder. They just want to see the thing they just created, or the thing they were last working on. So sort by either creation date, modification date, or date added is what will be most helpful to most of them and result in the least open tickets for Microsoft. But to remove the other options, that’s just bad.
- nitrammm 4y ago
  Maybe I misunderstand, it's definitely possible to sort by name and select to apply it to all folders? That feature has been there for several decades...
Dah00n 4y ago
I have used Windows since, well since Windows became a thing, and I have never had problems with finding Copy/Cut/Properties/Etc. but every single time in Windows 11..... It amazes me that Windows gets worse with every update. I'd rater use an updated Windows Vista than Win11, yuck!
GuB-42 4y ago
File management in Windows is, I think, the best for a consumer OS, on par with Linux (sometimes better, sometime worse, depending on your distro). Not because it is good, but because Microsoft can't keep up with the others when it comes to messing up file management. iOS: you essentially don't have files, just internal storage for apps Android: you have files, but they are making it really hard to access them MacOS: actually not that bad, but they still try hard to hide the filesystem from you Linux: it is a UNIX system, files are everything and you have free access, but the experience tends to be inconsistent because there is no standard toolkit With Windows, you have full access to the filesystem (depending on your permissions of course), the UI has become inconsistent lately, but there is almost always a way to get to the common file picker, and the explorer shell is quite nice: you can open file, copy, move, drag and drop, etc... with relative consistency. These operations seem trivial but if you have used some bare bone Linux desktops, you will realize that they are not.
- rafark 4y ago
  I have to disagree. There’s nothing like column view for windows. The “address” bar in the windows file manager is very useful, though. I’ll give you that. But other than that, I find Finder better. Finder also has tabs (I don’t know if windows copied this, I haven’t used windows since windows 8).
  - CRConrad 4y ago
    > There’s nothing like column view for windows. Yes there is. Only it's called “Details” view (if I understood what you meant correctly.) Press the [Alt] key to make Explorer’s menu appear, then View, then Details. IIRC. HTH!
  - Bjartr 4y ago
    What kind of column view are you wanting? I've been more or less happy with the columns offered by the "details" "icon size" option.
    - rafark 4y ago

mixmastamyk 4y ago

So depressing because Explorer from the 2k/XP era was best in class and about as complete and discoverable as a shell ever got.

sodapopcan 4y ago
XP was the best OS and I miss it. You had to switch it to use the classic 95/97/2000 skin, of course :) I haven't used Windows since.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  The shell yes. Lack of a decent terminal would sink it—besides the other reasons it is not suitable any longer... software support and security concerns. Reply edit: Guess you could putty into Linux, but not worth the hassle at that point.
  - sodapopcan 4y ago
    Oh right. I was writing spaghetti PHP in those days so never had use for a terminal, so I guess that is required context.
  - Dagger2 4y ago
    bash in mintty is pretty decent. mintty can do some things better than many terminals on Linux, even: https://mintty.github.io/mintty-gnuplot.png https://mintty.github.io/mintty-gnuplot.png
    - mixmastamyk 4y ago
      Believe I've seen that, come to think of it. Does a featureful version support XP? How did they work around the console limitations of older Windows?
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  What made you dislike Windows 7?
  - mey 4y ago
    Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 were both very good operating systems. My memory is hazy, but I feel like Windows XP didn't really hit it's stride until SP 1 or 2, when USB really stabilized.
    - CRConrad 4y ago
      IIRC, XP SP3 was the canonical “use this” version.
  - sodapopcan 4y ago
    Sorry, that was very misleading wording on my part. I started a job where they gave me a Linux machine that was lying around. When it was clear I was going to stay they said I could get whatever I wanted. I was going to get a Windows machine but since everyone else was on a Mac (and it was the time when the 27" iMac was brand new) I decided to follow suit and that's what I've been on ever since.
  - mixmastamyk 4y ago
    That's when the Explorer and task bar started getting convoluted, hiding things, and becoming abstract instead of concrete. It's done in the spirit of helping newbies of course but it actively harms folks who do understand, as well as crippling the newbies who might learn, to always be dependent. Also, the transparent effects didn't help anything and look silly in hindsight. They also took out color customization and you couldn't have a dark theme for the next ten years! Of course the type ahead search in the Start menu was a big improvement, and elevation for security. But as always one step forward, two steps back with modern Windows.

mihaaly 4y ago

Agreed. That OneDrive thingy my company foolishly employs is making the file ""manager"" only bigger, not better. One of my favourite is how it overrules me in renaming a file. Half way into renaming it decides I will not rename it and just clears my editing, or exits editing mode. Refreshes or something, ruining what I do along the way. Renaming files is a hit or miss thing, unpridictable. Something pretty essential thing solved pretty well more than half a century ago, managed to be ruined by MS.

wkat4242 4y ago
The business version of onedrive is just a shell around SharePoint which has a bunch of awkward character restrictions. This is the cause of that. I don't use consumer onedrive but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't do this.
jcparkyn 4y ago
> Half way into renaming it decides I will not rename it and just clears my editing, or exits editing mode. In case you're curious what's actually going on here, it happens when one of the status symbols (e.g uploading or synced) on a file in the same folder changes, which causes the view to refresh and the text box to be cleared. That's why it happens much more often when renaming multiple files. I remember finding a bug report about it years ago, with lots of people complaining about it and no response from MS. Infuriating.

dahwolf 4y ago

Same for "My Documents". If they are mine, then why are 7 trillion programs and processes dumping their random garbage in it? Or how about Modern office programs, where saving something to disk instead of the cloud is now many clicks away.

jiggawatts 4y ago
Because the KPIs for the OneDrive product managers is based on usage. They have to break your workflow for their bonus.

Loughla 4y ago

My number 1 complaint after switching from linux mint back to windows after years in linux-land after building a gaming rig - The auto sort by date and group by most recent in their file explorer that you have to either use a third party app to turn back into sort by name and group by none, or - do that selection for literally every folder on its own. That's a fucking train wreck. Who decided that sorting by date instead of name was a good idea? WHY?

vel0city 4y ago
> Who decided that sorting by date instead of name was a good idea? It depends on the context. Sometimes when I'm looking at photos, I really do prefer sorting by date. Similarly, when I'm looking at the Downloads folder, I'm probably most interested in the thing I just downloaded, so having that near the top makes a lot of sense and would gladly prefer that than having it sorted alphabetically. However, if I'm just looking at a directory of documents, alphabetical wins for sure. If I'm looking at a music collection, I'd probably want to sort by artist name alphabetically, but not necessarily filename.
thewebcount 4y ago
I can kind of understand making it the default sort, but not getting rid of the others. Most users don’t know they can sort the list of things in a folder. They just want to see the thing they just created, or the thing they were last working on. So sort by either creation date, modification date, or date added is what will be most helpful to most of them and result in the least open tickets for Microsoft. But to remove the other options, that’s just bad.
nitrammm 4y ago
Maybe I misunderstand, it's definitely possible to sort by name and select to apply it to all folders? That feature has been there for several decades...

Dah00n 4y ago

I have used Windows since, well since Windows became a thing, and I have never had problems with finding Copy/Cut/Properties/Etc. but every single time in Windows 11..... It amazes me that Windows gets worse with every update. I'd rater use an updated Windows Vista than Win11, yuck!

GuB-42 4y ago

File management in Windows is, I think, the best for a consumer OS, on par with Linux (sometimes better, sometime worse, depending on your distro). Not because it is good, but because Microsoft can't keep up with the others when it comes to messing up file management. iOS: you essentially don't have files, just internal storage for apps Android: you have files, but they are making it really hard to access them MacOS: actually not that bad, but they still try hard to hide the filesystem from you Linux: it is a UNIX system, files are everything and you have free access, but the experience tends to be inconsistent because there is no standard toolkit With Windows, you have full access to the filesystem (depending on your permissions of course), the UI has become inconsistent lately, but there is almost always a way to get to the common file picker, and the explorer shell is quite nice: you can open file, copy, move, drag and drop, etc... with relative consistency. These operations seem trivial but if you have used some bare bone Linux desktops, you will realize that they are not.

rafark 4y ago
I have to disagree. There’s nothing like column view for windows. The “address” bar in the windows file manager is very useful, though. I’ll give you that. But other than that, I find Finder better. Finder also has tabs (I don’t know if windows copied this, I haven’t used windows since windows 8).
- CRConrad 4y ago
  > There’s nothing like column view for windows. Yes there is. Only it's called “Details” view (if I understood what you meant correctly.) Press the [Alt] key to make Explorer’s menu appear, then View, then Details. IIRC. HTH!
- Bjartr 4y ago
  What kind of column view are you wanting? I've been more or less happy with the columns offered by the "details" "icon size" option.
  - rafark 4y ago