File open dialog – BIGGER IS BETTER (xp)

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This may sound like the ravings of a raving lunatic but …
… I can’t believe I’ve not seen this before: The File Open dialogue box can be stretched wider (and deeper) at the bottom RH corner. The stretch is sticky – it stays.
I’m euphoric!

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While you’re at it, also check out:
– The Places Bar on the left hand side of the dialog.
– The buttons in the toolbar at the top of the dialog, including the Tools menu.
– The little dropdown arrow to the right of the Open button.

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– The Places Bar on the left hand side of the dialog.
History looks useful, thanks, but the rest of them (for me) not. I’m a great un-fan of the MyDocuments concept.

– The buttons in the toolbar at the top of the dialog, including the Tools menu.
UpOneLevel: I frequently use
SearchTheWeb takes me to MSN, but I prefer Google.
Delete scares me (I really HAVE to stop “cleaning up” my hard drive. It costs me hours to rebuild …)
CreateNewFolder might be useful, although it can lead (me) to unpruned growth.

– The little dropdown arrow to the right of the Open button.
This I liked greatly, especially the “read only” and “as copy”; I’m all for things that protect me from myself at the time of opening. I’m in the habit of opening a document and immediately saving it as “eraseme”, or “eraseme2” etc. That, of course, gives rise to a spawn of “eras*.*”, so thenm I need a batch process to flush them out every now and then. I’d been considering a macro to “open and save as a named copy”, but the drop-down button removes that need. Thanks.

I checked out Preview and Thumbnail, but Preview gave me “not available”, and Thumbnail seemed dormant.
Tools- Clear History was a neat experiment. Glad I didn’t do that first.

Now I feel I’m getting close to professional level …..

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I love the Places Bar …. you can add your own folder shortcuts to it. Select the folder you commonly use. Got to tools and “Add to my places”. It gets put at the bottom of the list but you can then right click on the icon and move it up. I have ended up with a customised My places bar that shows the 8-10 folders I use all the time. Available to me in all the MS apps …. brilliant. It sure saves digging down through our folder structure.

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> shows the 8-10 folders I use all the time

NOW we’re cooking with gas …… That’s nice, and I have begun customizing the File Open dialogue as you suggest. I was about to ask how to remove the junk, but i see the thread developing …. Thanks again

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As you already know – pride of place in the Places bar is taken up by Microsoft’s useless directories. If you want to change that, then assign a few directories of your own and merge the attachment into the registry (remove the .txt extension, right click and choose ‘merge’). It sets all the standard directories to ‘not show’

All standard ‘don’t sue me’ warnings apply to modifying the registry

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The drawback of this (in Office 2002 and 2003) is that you can’t move your other places up and down anymore.
It’s safer to move those standard places to the bottom, and private places to the top.

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The drawback of this (in Office 2002 and 2003) is that you can’t move your other places up and down anymore

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I’d never noticed and of course its obvious once you point it out
For my five or six key references I’m going to live with the inconvenience

I sometimes wonder if Microsoft has to deliberately code for these kinds of side effects or whether simple incompetence covers it.

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> whether simple incompetence covers it.

Speaking of which, after a month of enjoying this device, I thought it was time I wrote some VBA code, a short macro, whose sole task would be to percolate the bottom (most recently added) entry to the top of the list. Who cares how many entries are on the list (OK, a means to limit the list to a pre-determined maximum number of entries?) as long as the most-recently added are visible at the top.

Any takers, or does the task fall to me, and if so, who volunteers to destructively-test my code. Karen?

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Hi ya Chris,

Would love to test your code

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> Would love to test your code

It is a 516KB PKZipped file, includes the application (Registry010.dot) and two libraries of VBA code and an installation routine.

I’m reluctant to post it here because it does manipulate the registry keys. Would you like it as an email attachment or to d/l it by FTP from my web site?

Note to moderators: I’m not against posting the code here, but am reluctant to post publicly an untested registry routine. Once it is “cleared for takeoff” by a select few competent testers, I can see no reason for not posting it, at least in the VBA forum.

I have attached the Readme.doc

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Thanks Chris,

I you send an email I will have a play with it.

Cheers

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Try double-clicking the title bar…

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> Try double-clicking the title bar…

Whoa! It’s just like working from Windows Explorer …..!

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The Windows XP All-In-One Desk Reference for Raving Lunatics (by our very own Woody Leonhard) tells us that little triangle in the lower RH corner is called a skid pad.

Now you know.

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> called a skid pad.
> Now you know.

Right.
Thanks.
But now I want to know WHY it is called that. (I associate skid-pads with advanced driver training courses….)

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