How to Stop File Explorer Sorting by Week and Month

Anonymous
2019-07-26T21:53:02+00:00

After the recent update Windows file explorer is now grouping items by day, week and month. I do not want this. I want the old way back please. How do I get rid of this new sorting? I hope this is not going to be like what happened to media folders where they now display metadata columns instead of name, date, size, type and even if you change them the next time you open the folder it has reverted back to metadata columns.

Update: I worked out that Group By must be set to none. How do I make this default so it doesn't revert back? I'd also like to stop my media folders reverting back to the old way too so they show name, date, size, type instead of Artist, Album, Title etc

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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Anonymous
2019-09-05T03:31:56+00:00

There is no bug.  Someone at Microsoft just managed to apply their default folder setting to everyone that installs the update.

To turn off file grouping feature:

  1. Open a folder that is Grouping by/sorting using week and month.
  2. Right Click in the folder
  3. Select 'Group by'
  4. Select '(None)'

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-04-23T03:25:52+00:00

    And most people's awareness of FolderTypes is limited to those available from the Customize tab in a folder's Properties dialog. But the Downloads type is reserved for the designated Downloads folder that normally appears under This PC.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-04-22T19:37:57+00:00

    I think giving Downloads its own FolderType makes sense. Before, it was tied to Generic, which also governs the Desktop folder under This PC, along with all other folders outrside of the user hierarchy.

    The important thing is: you can override the new machine-wide default by using Apply to Folders from the View tab of the Folder Options dialog.

    I've posted more detail previously, please search for it.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-04-07T05:51:05+00:00

    There's a tool available now to set Explorer views globally. The settings won't get reverted back unexpectedly because it sets defaults (per user, not per machine). It's called WinSetView. You can find it on GitHub. I'm the developer. See the Readme for full details.

    Thank you. That's great news! I was doing my usual unchecking and checking file attributes again today and still cannot believe that more users including Microsoft engineers are not driven demented by this. It never used to be like this before Windows 10. So many times a new version of Windows delivers a number of improvements and then sadly one or two huge steps backwards in some areas.

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