Does anybody 'Hide extensions for known file types'?
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There are few things as dull as installing Windows. I'm in the update stage and having downloaded the updates, it's installing them - 141 of them. That's just Windows, once I get Office on there and Visual Studio there'll be all the service packs as it morphs from 'Windows' to 'Microsoft' update. In my set-up routine I always go into file explorer and make all the file extensions show up as I'm simply lost without them. Also hidden files, but this time I'm going to leave system files hidden. So question - does anybody hide file extensions or does everybody turn them back on?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
I am a developer and this has caught me out. On the clients environment, my code would check to see if the file lock.txt exists, and if so it would lock the user from doing anything. When I deployed my code, I right-clicked int the explorer, and created a new file called lock.txt. The program could not find the file. It took me a while to notice that file extensions were hidden. As soon as I disabled that, I noticed I had created a file called lock.txt.txt. I hate this feature and switch it off on every computer I work on. Pain in the a$$
** death by snoo snoo **
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I don't see how that causes any confusion - it is just part of the file name. I would think the potential to have several files in the same location with (apparently) the same name would be more confusing...
It causes confusion because you then have multiple files with "identical" names. So "Mydatabase.mdb" and "Mydatabase.ldb" both appear as "Mydatabase". Cue support call: "Click on the "Mydatabase" icon, it will open MS Access". "I did that, nothing happened..." It's a nightmare, and as above, the very first thing I do on any Windows system I work on is set it to show file extensions and hidden files.
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H.Brydon wrote:
P.S. I install and mostly use Windows File Manager on my Windows machines (instead of Explorer), which can be found here[^].
Nice! I too was an advocate and didn't use explorer until they day they got rid of file manager, but I hadn't realised it lived on in the underworld... I know what you mean about custom views too, although its usually in my MP3s that all meaningful fields disappear.
Regards, Rob Philpott.
I always contended that it was the beginning of the end for Windows when they scrapped "File Manager" and introduced "Windows Explorer". Instead of the user being in control and actively "manage" their system, all of a sudden they were lost in a maze of unknown structure and had to "explore". Up to that time I was supporting Windows 3.x users and pretty much knew the purpose and location of every one of Windows' 4000-odd files. From Win95 I was as lost as the next person and from that point stopped providing Windows support and switched to apps development.
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There are few things as dull as installing Windows. I'm in the update stage and having downloaded the updates, it's installing them - 141 of them. That's just Windows, once I get Office on there and Visual Studio there'll be all the service packs as it morphs from 'Windows' to 'Microsoft' update. In my set-up routine I always go into file explorer and make all the file extensions show up as I'm simply lost without them. Also hidden files, but this time I'm going to leave system files hidden. So question - does anybody hide file extensions or does everybody turn them back on?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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We were forced to have them off, some big app was so shoddily coded that it wouldn't work if extensions where on. Plus with Office's stupid similar icons and file descriptions that are identical till about the 30th character... And we suffer regularly because it...mainly because XP has then no f'ing way to find out what the extension is. The properties dialog hides it too, if they'd just added that simple fix, at least some issues would go away. I turn it on everywhere I can.
In the "good old days", Office applications had names like "Word", "Excel", "Powerpoint". So when in the Start menu, you could use the keyboard to select them by just typing the first letter. Then (from Office 2003 or thereabouts) they changed the app names to "Microsoft Office Access", "Microsoft Office Excel" etc, so making single-letter selection from the start menu impossible. Don't know what bright spark came up with that "improvement" but they should have lost their job... or at least their promotion. Bet they didn't, though. If I'm using a system with Office pre-installed the next thing I do after "fixing" the hidden file extensions is to "correct" the names in the start menu so that they're useable. :-(
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I don't see how that causes any confusion - it is just part of the file name. I would think the potential to have several files in the same location with (apparently) the same name would be more confusing...
Actually I've found that "feature" to cause issues with at least one lay person (the financial director). After he's made is Excel file, he renamed it in explorer. Then coundn't find it to open again. The reason being he removed the xls extension in the rename process because part of the name he gave it was split using a period. Yes windows does pop that warning dialog. But lay users tend to just click OK if something pops up :wtf: For myself though, I want to see the damned extension thankyou very much! Especially since I use several programs which open the same file types. E.g. I prefer editing Docx in Word, but Doc in Libre Office (I find its consistency in formating old Doc files better). Many other reasons too.
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There are few things as dull as installing Windows. I'm in the update stage and having downloaded the updates, it's installing them - 141 of them. That's just Windows, once I get Office on there and Visual Studio there'll be all the service packs as it morphs from 'Windows' to 'Microsoft' update. In my set-up routine I always go into file explorer and make all the file extensions show up as I'm simply lost without them. Also hidden files, but this time I'm going to leave system files hidden. So question - does anybody hide file extensions or does everybody turn them back on?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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I turn them on. Can't live without 'em. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
How could more information add to the confusion? It is like giving someone the name of a street but hiding the house number. Sure you could find the house eventually by knocking on every door and seeing if the right person answers.
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Turning that "feature" off is one of the first things I do on any Windows install. I find it incredibly irritating having to rely in an icon in explorer to determine the file type. I don't know who in their right mind decided "Let's hide file extensions, that seems a great idea!".
.-. |o,o| ,| \_\\=/\_ .-""-. ||/\_/\_\\\_\\ /\[\] \_ \_\\ |\_/|(\_)|\\\\ \_|\_o\_LII|\_ \\.\_./// / | ==== | \\ |\\\_/|"\` |\_| ==== |\_| |\_|\_| ||" || || |-|-| ||LI o || |\_|\_| ||'----'|| /\_/ \\\_\\ /\_\_| |\_\_\\Agree 100%, that is one of the many STUPID things MS has done to try to dumb down Windows, or actually I believe it's MS trying to copy features in Macs... even though they seem to be copying the bad features. Why hide extensions? Why hide menus? Why hide all my menu's and buttons in IE just so the web page can take up the whole screen? Wasn't there an option for full screen already, THAT NOBODY USED??? They must have thought, gee here is a feature nobody uses, so why don't we make it the default view and shove it down everybody's throat so our commercials can look pretty. I was a long time user of IE only, til the last few versions came out, now it's goodbye and good riddance to IE. Don't even get me started on the train wreck that is Windows 8... PATHETIC!!! Another thing I just thought of, why do they have the "More" and "Less" buttons on file copy dialogs??? What is "copying c:\??? to d:\???" just too much info for people to handle, that you have to hide it by default or it might cause somebody's brain to explode or something? Reminds me of some web pages that have "more", then you click it and there is ONE additional word... PATHETIC.
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There are few things as dull as installing Windows. I'm in the update stage and having downloaded the updates, it's installing them - 141 of them. That's just Windows, once I get Office on there and Visual Studio there'll be all the service packs as it morphs from 'Windows' to 'Microsoft' update. In my set-up routine I always go into file explorer and make all the file extensions show up as I'm simply lost without them. Also hidden files, but this time I'm going to leave system files hidden. So question - does anybody hide file extensions or does everybody turn them back on?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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Turning that "feature" off is one of the first things I do on any Windows install. I find it incredibly irritating having to rely in an icon in explorer to determine the file type. I don't know who in their right mind decided "Let's hide file extensions, that seems a great idea!".
.-. |o,o| ,| \_\\=/\_ .-""-. ||/\_/\_\\\_\\ /\[\] \_ \_\\ |\_/|(\_)|\\\\ \_|\_o\_LII|\_ \\.\_./// / | ==== | \\ |\\\_/|"\` |\_| ==== |\_| |\_|\_| ||" || || |-|-| ||LI o || |\_|\_| ||'----'|| /\_/ \\\_\\ /\_\_| |\_\_\\Quote:
I don't know who in their right mind decided "Let's hide file extensions, that seems a great idea!".
This statement just proves that you are a "developer" and not a "user". Microsoft figures there are many more "users" than "developers" and the "developers" can figure it out or develop their own script to change it. It should be a compliment to you that Microsoft thinks you are smart enough to fix what bugs you.
Brent
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There are few things as dull as installing Windows. I'm in the update stage and having downloaded the updates, it's installing them - 141 of them. That's just Windows, once I get Office on there and Visual Studio there'll be all the service packs as it morphs from 'Windows' to 'Microsoft' update. In my set-up routine I always go into file explorer and make all the file extensions show up as I'm simply lost without them. Also hidden files, but this time I'm going to leave system files hidden. So question - does anybody hide file extensions or does everybody turn them back on?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Actually, I do. In Windows 8 you're always two clicks away from making those extensions visible, and one click from hiding them back again (yes, I am referring to the Explorer ribbon, which has made some options like that one way more accessible). So, 99% of the time, I avoid this visual clutter (I rarely need the extensions anyway, unless I want to change the file type of a text or xml based file).
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There are few things as dull as installing Windows. I'm in the update stage and having downloaded the updates, it's installing them - 141 of them. That's just Windows, once I get Office on there and Visual Studio there'll be all the service packs as it morphs from 'Windows' to 'Microsoft' update. In my set-up routine I always go into file explorer and make all the file extensions show up as I'm simply lost without them. Also hidden files, but this time I'm going to leave system files hidden. So question - does anybody hide file extensions or does everybody turn them back on?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
I never had a problem in relying on the Windows Explorer icon instead on the file's extension. For a person with no IT knowledge, it's an extra useless text appended to the actual file name, and for them it's a bit confusing I guess, especially when renaming the files.
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There are few things as dull as installing Windows. I'm in the update stage and having downloaded the updates, it's installing them - 141 of them. That's just Windows, once I get Office on there and Visual Studio there'll be all the service packs as it morphs from 'Windows' to 'Microsoft' update. In my set-up routine I always go into file explorer and make all the file extensions show up as I'm simply lost without them. Also hidden files, but this time I'm going to leave system files hidden. So question - does anybody hide file extensions or does everybody turn them back on?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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There are few things as dull as installing Windows. I'm in the update stage and having downloaded the updates, it's installing them - 141 of them. That's just Windows, once I get Office on there and Visual Studio there'll be all the service packs as it morphs from 'Windows' to 'Microsoft' update. In my set-up routine I always go into file explorer and make all the file extensions show up as I'm simply lost without them. Also hidden files, but this time I'm going to leave system files hidden. So question - does anybody hide file extensions or does everybody turn them back on?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
I feel your pain. That's why I keep an image of my system, I'm tired of the mind numbing task of building the thing up. As for that option, yeah, I always turn on visibility of system files and full file-extensions. If it was a "known" file type then why have an extension? :)
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There are few things as dull as installing Windows. I'm in the update stage and having downloaded the updates, it's installing them - 141 of them. That's just Windows, once I get Office on there and Visual Studio there'll be all the service packs as it morphs from 'Windows' to 'Microsoft' update. In my set-up routine I always go into file explorer and make all the file extensions show up as I'm simply lost without them. Also hidden files, but this time I'm going to leave system files hidden. So question - does anybody hide file extensions or does everybody turn them back on?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
That this setting still exists at all, much less being set by default to on, is one of my big pet peeves about new Windows installations. I always turn it off everywhere I go when I set up Windows for other people. It is a disaster waiting to happen. Why? Well, people have already mentioned confusion occurring with "duplicate" files in the same directory, but there's something much, much worse: users can't tell the difference between
CoolPictureIGotInAnEmailOrFromTheWeb.jpgandCoolPictureIGotInAnEmailOrFromTheWeb.exeand this makes for a nice big, fat security risk. We tell people "don't run programs that don't come from trusted places" and then we hide- by default- the easiest way of telling what files are programs. Foolish, and much more dangerous than someone doing a completely reversibleMyWordDocument.docxtoMyWordDocument.unrecognizableExtensionrename. -
How could more information add to the confusion? It is like giving someone the name of a street but hiding the house number. Sure you could find the house eventually by knocking on every door and seeing if the right person answers.
I think you misunderstood what I meant. I do like seeing file extensions. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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There are few things as dull as installing Windows. I'm in the update stage and having downloaded the updates, it's installing them - 141 of them. That's just Windows, once I get Office on there and Visual Studio there'll be all the service packs as it morphs from 'Windows' to 'Microsoft' update. In my set-up routine I always go into file explorer and make all the file extensions show up as I'm simply lost without them. Also hidden files, but this time I'm going to leave system files hidden. So question - does anybody hide file extensions or does everybody turn them back on?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
I agree - it's one of the first things I do, show all extensions and hidden files. Next thing is get rid of as many icons in file manager as I can and show 'details'. I just went thro the pain of changing from XP to 7 after the XP box died and it seemed time to move on what with XP support coming to an end soon. But the 'hide extensions' business is just a minor irritation compared to the hassle of reinstalling all programs. I would prefer to be able to change an OS without touching the applications. And file manager in 7 has some unbelievable inconveniences compared with previous versions. philj
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Lloyd Atkinson wrote:
I don't know who in their right mind decided "Let's hide file extensions, that seems a great idea!".
Having been involved in supporting people who are not (to put it politely) PC-literate, for a number of years, I think it's an excellent idea. Extensions are just something else to confuse the lay-person, who really could not care less. They just want to know where their letter, leaflet, or bank statement can be found.
Use the best guess
Do YOU really know where your things are? This whole Library business is a mess! Try one to find out WHERE your scanner has put the picture. So - I need really to know, and I show also all files with extension (LNK PIF etc) also I want to see the "superhidden" files.
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There are few things as dull as installing Windows. I'm in the update stage and having downloaded the updates, it's installing them - 141 of them. That's just Windows, once I get Office on there and Visual Studio there'll be all the service packs as it morphs from 'Windows' to 'Microsoft' update. In my set-up routine I always go into file explorer and make all the file extensions show up as I'm simply lost without them. Also hidden files, but this time I'm going to leave system files hidden. So question - does anybody hide file extensions or does everybody turn them back on?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
I have them hidden until I need them and most of the time is faster to simply fire a Command Prompt and do whatever I wanted to do with the extension of the file.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...