Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Hack Windows Explorer for Better Efficiency

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/hack-windows-explorer-for-efficiency-boosts/

Hack Windows Explorer for Efficiency Boosts

Hack Windows Explorer for Efficiency Boosts

Windows Explorer — known as File Explorer on Windows 8 — is an application that you probably spend a good amount of time in. Even Windows geeks that avoid using any other Microsoft program tend to use Windows Explorer instead of a third-party file manager. But, while we spend time customizing our browser with extensions, we often don’t think about hacking our file manager. There are a lot of ways you can customize Windows Explorer to make your file management experience faster and more efficient.
We won’t dwell on Windows Explorer’s built-in options here — just the most interesting ways you can go off the beaten track and do things that aren’t obvious.

Add Copy to Folder and Move to Folder

With a quick registry hack, you can add “Copy to Folder” and “Move to Folder” entries to your Windows Explorer context menu. You’ll be able to right-click on files or folders and select the Copy To Folder or Move To Folder options. Selecting either option will open a window where you can choose your preferred destination folder, simplifying the file copying and moving process.
To do this, simply download the .reg file for your preferred option from the Seven Forums website — either Add_Copy_To_Folder.reg or Add_Move_To_Folder.reg — and double-click it. Windows will add the information to your registry and display the options in your context menu.
copy-to-folder-and-move-to-folder

Edit Your Send To Menu

The Send To menu allows you to right-click files or folders and easily perform an operation on them. By default, you can send a document to your desktop, compress it, email it to someone, and more. But you aren’t just limited to the options hat appear here by default. Your Send To menu is actually just a folder, and you can open it to easily add your own custom shortcuts and delete the shortcuts that already exist there.
To open the Send To folder on Windows 7 or 8, press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog, type shell:sendto, and press Enter. After you’ve opened the folder, copy shortcuts you want to use to the folder. If you want to remove shortcuts from the Send To menu, just delete them from the folder.
windows-sent-to-folder

Customize Your Context Menu

Windows Explorer’s context menu, or right-click menu, becomes cluttered over time as you install more and more software. You can normally uninstall the associated programs to get rid of their right-click menu entries, but what if you’d prefer to leave them installed? You can use a tool like CCleaner to remove options you don’t use from your right-click menu, making it more minimal and less cluttered.
CCleaner doesn’t list all context menu entries — check out our list of ways to remove context menu entries for more information.
make windows 7 faster
If you’d rather add custom shortcuts to your context menu, you can do that by using a program like FileMenu Tools, which we’ve previously covered.

Change Your Default Folder

On Windows 7, Windows Explorer opens to your Libraries folder whenever you open it. But maybe you don’t use libraries, or perhaps you just use a different folder more often instead.
Microsoft doesn’t make this option obvious, but you can easily change the default Windows Explorer folder to your preferred folder by editing your taskbar’s Windows Explorer shortcut. Whenever you launch Windows Explorer, you’ll see the folder you chose. We like making the Downloads folder the default folder, giving you easy access to your recently downloaded files, but you should choose whatever folder you use most.
To do this, right-click the Windows Explorer (or File Explorer) shortcut on your taskbar, right-click Windows Explorer in the jump list that appears, and select Properties. Add the path of your preferred folder to the end of the Shortcut box.
change-windows-explorer-default-folder

Add Tabs

Apple’s Finder is getting tabs in OS X Mavericks, and Linux file managers have had tabs for a long time. But Windows Explorer is still without tabs, even on Windows 8. Internet Explorer was the last big browser to get tabs, and it seems that Windows Explorer will be the last big file manager to get tabs — if it ever does.
While you can replace Windows Explorer with tabbed file managers, you don’t have to switch to a new file manager just for this small feature. Third-party tools like QTTabBar can add tabs to Windows Explorer, giving you the ability to have several folders open in the same file browsing window.
qttabbar

Improve File Copying

The file-copy dialog on Windows 7 and previous versions of Windows isn’t very good. It’s slow, has trouble dealing with file conflicts, and doesn’t allow you to pause file operations. If there’s a file conflict or another problem, the file-copy dialog will stop in its tracks and wait for your input rather than continuing and dealing with conflicts later. Windows 8 improved on this, but you don’t have to upgrade to Windows 8 just to get a better file-copying experience.
To get an improved file-copy dialog, just install TeraCopy and enable its Explorer integration options. Whenever you copy or move files in Windows Explorer — either with drag and drop or copy and paste — TeraCopy will leap into action and perform the file-copying instead. This effectively rips out Windows’ poor file-copy dialog and gives you a much better one. You can disable the integration in the future if you’d like to use the standard file-copy dialog.
TeraCopy also adds itself to your context menu as an option, so you can launch it only when you want it and use the standard file-copy dialog most of the time, if you prefer.
teracopy
Do you have any other useful tips for hacking away at Windows Explorer? Leave a comment and share them!

2 Comments - Write a Comment

0VOTES
Reply

Mohit C

great one,i came to learn about new things here
0VOTES
Reply

Amit G

Awesome. Started using it immediately. Was looking ways to modify default file explorer location and got it the right place MUO. Thanks a ton.
Posted by at No comments:

Using Formula in Excel to Count the # of Values less than/more than zero


http://www.excelforum.com/excel-formulas-and-functions/679226-find-the-first-value-in-a-row-greater-than-zero.html

+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 5 of 5

  1. 04-09-2009, 01:35 AM#1
    Algeraist is offline
    Registered User
    Join Date
    11-16-2008
    Location
    Adelaide,Australia
    Posts
    12

    Find the first value in a row greater than zero

    Hi,
    I'm trying to find the column number of the first cell in a row that is greater than zero.

    There are 31 columns of of data, so if statments aren't working for me.

    any suggestions

    Example
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
    A 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 1 0 = 7
    B 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 = 3
    C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 = 9

    Thanks
    Reply With QuoteReply With Quote
  2. 04-09-2009, 03:18 AM#2
    DonkeyOte is offline
    Forum Moderator          DonkeyOte's Avatar
    Join Date
    10-22-2008
    Location
    Suffolk, UK
    MS-Off Ver
    2002, 2007 & 2010
    Posts
    21,509

    Re: Find the first value in a row greater than zero

    You could use an Array

    AF1: =MATCH(TRUE,$A1:$AE1>0,0)
    confirmed with CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER

    copy down as required

    EDIT: I spotted from a daddlylonglegs post a way to use INDEX within the MATCH and thereby avoid need for Array...

    AF1: =MATCH(TRUE,INDEX($A1:$AE1>0,0),0)
    Last edited by DonkeyOte; 04-09-2009 at 03:35 AM. Reason: typo & dll edit
    My Recommended Reading:

    Volatility
    Sumproduct & Arrays
    Pivot Intro
    Email from XL - VBA & Outlook VBA
    Function Dictionary & Function Translations
    Dynamic Named Ranges
    Reply With QuoteReply With Quote
  3. 06-14-2012, 12:42 PM#3
    twointum is offline
    Registered User
    Join Date
    06-13-2012
    Location
    Hamsterdam
    MS-Off Ver
    Excel 2010
    Posts
    17

    Re: Find the first value in a row greater than zero

    Quote Originally Posted by DonkeyOte View Post
    You could use an Array
    AF1: =MATCH(TRUE,INDEX($A1:$AE1>0,0),0)
    This is glorious, I use it all the time, thank you!
    Reply With QuoteReply With Quote
  4. 08-02-2012, 11:54 AM#4
    dreich is offline
    Registered User
    Join Date
    06-15-2012
    Location
    Sacramento, CA
    MS-Off Ver
    Excel 2010
    Posts
    7

    Re: Find the first value in a row greater than zero

    Fantastic! That is very useful!
    Reply With QuoteReply With Quote
  5. 08-06-2013, 01:29 PM#5
    patryk899 is offline
    Registered User
    Join Date
    08-06-2013
    Location
    poznań
    MS-Off Ver
    Excel 2010
    Posts
    1

    Re: Find the first value in a row greater than zero

    Quote Originally Posted by DonkeyOte View Post
    You could use an Array

    AF1: =MATCH(TRUE,$A1:$AE1>0,0)
    confirmed with CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER

    copy down as required

    EDIT: I spotted from a daddlylonglegs post a way to use INDEX within the MATCH and thereby avoid need for Array...

    AF1: =MATCH(TRUE,INDEX($A1:$AE1>0,0),0)
    Thanks a lot for saving my ***!

     http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/match-function-HP010062414.aspx

    MATCH function

    This article describes the formula syntax and usage of the MATCH function in Microsoft Office Excel.

    Description

    The MATCH function searches for a specified item in a range of cells, and then returns the relative position of that item in the range. For example, if the range A1:A3 contains the values 5, 25, and 38, then the formula
    =MATCH(25,A1:A3,0)
    returns the number 2, because 25 is the second item in the range.
    Use MATCH instead of one of the LOOKUP functions when you need the position of an item in a range instead of the item itself. For example, you might use the MATCH function to provide a value for the row_numargument of the INDEX function.

    Syntax

    MATCH(lookup_value, lookup_array, [match_type])
    The MATCH function syntax has the following arguments:
    • lookup_value    Required. The value that you want to match in lookup_array. For example, when you look up someone's number in a telephone book, you are using the person's name as the lookup value, but the telephone number is the value you want.
    The lookup_value argument can be a value (number, text, or logical value) or a cell reference to a number, text, or logical value.
    • lookup_array    Required. The range of cells being searched.
    • match_type    Optional. The number -1, 0, or 1. The match_type argument specifies how Excel matcheslookup_value with values in lookup_array. The default value for this argument is 1.
    The following table describes how the function finds values based on the setting of the match_type argument.
    MATCH_TYPEBEHAVIOR
    1 or omittedMATCH finds the largest value that is less than or equal to lookup_value. The values in thelookup_array argument must be placed in ascending order, for example: ...-2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ..., A-Z, FALSE, TRUE.
    0MATCH finds the first value that is exactly equal to lookup_value. The values in thelookup_array argument can be in any order.
    -1MATCH finds the smallest value that is greater than or equal to lookup_value. The values in the lookup_array argument must be placed in descending order, for example: TRUE, FALSE, Z-A, ...2, 1, 0, -1, -2, ..., and so on.
     NOTES 
    • MATCH returns the position of the matched value within lookup_array, not the value itself. For example,MATCH("b",{"a","b","c"},0) returns 2, which is the relative position of "b" within the array {"a","b","c"}.
    • MATCH does not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters when matching text values.
    • If MATCH is unsuccessful in finding a match, it returns the #N/A error value.
    • If match_type is 0 and lookup_value is a text string, you can use the wildcard characters — the question mark (?) and asterisk (*) — in the lookup_value argument. A question mark matches any single character; an asterisk matches any sequence of characters. If you want to find an actual question mark or asterisk, type a tilde (~) before the character.

    Example

    The example may be easier to understand if you copy it to a blank worksheet.
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6


    7

    8

    9
    ABC
    ProductCount
    Bananas25
    Oranges38
    Apples40
    Pears41
    FormulaDescriptionResult
    =MATCH(39,B2:B5,1)Because there is not an exact match, the position of the next lowest value (38) in the range B2:B5 is returned.2
    =MATCH(41,B2:B5,0)The position of the value 41 in the range B2:B5.4
    =MATCH(40,B2:B5,-1)Returns an error because the values in the range B2:B5 are not in descending order.#N/A
    Did this article help you?



Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)