Column Size & Sorting By Columns

Have you ever needed to find something in a folder that had hundreds of files in it?  You usually know something about the file. If it's the name, then it should be easy, as columns are sorted by name by default. But if you're not sure of the name, perhaps you know roughly when it was created what type of file it is, just not the name or the last time it was modified.

The answer is to sort by columns.

If you click the top of any column in Windows Explorer, it will list the contents of that folder in order based on that column.

For example, if you click the Modified column, it will list the files in the folder based upon the last date they were modified. It will sort A-Z the first time you click, then Z-A on the next click. The example above shows the columns sorted by size.

This trick also works with many other programs. For example, if you click the column headings in Outlook Express, you can sort your e-mail by the column heading (i.e. subject, date received, etc).

You may know that you can resize the columns in Windows Explorer by just grabbing the little black column separators at the top and drag them to the size you need.

However, if you double-click in the little space between columns, the column automatically resizes itself so it shows the complete name of every item in the column (based on the item with the longest name).

This "trick" works with most programs that use columns of information (Outlook, Excel, etc).