This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
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
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
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:
Lol, if this is not considered a bug in the patch, its certainly the shoddy user experience that winblows delivers.
"Oh of course we treat all our users like idiots, so assume we know better than you what you want, so we'll just update your settings without asking.. :p"
This answer has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The answer was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.
Comments have been turned off. Learn more
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(281.6, 34%, 37%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3ELF%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
I completely agree. Perhaps my pointing out that there are three (or more) different views of Downloads implied setting it three times, but I certainly didn't say that. Set it once with Apply to Folders and you're done.
Please note that you must do two more steps to turn off Group by Date for ALL Downloads views:
If you stop after just doing the first three steps, you'll only be changing ONE view into your Downloads folder location. If you access Downloads via a different route, such as This PC, Downloads, C:\Users\UserName\Downloads, or File Open/Save within an application, each of those views is actually a different folder that points to the same Downloads location. Therefore, you must turn off Group By Date for the Downloads folder type in order for it to be off everywhere. The additional steps shown in the image above accomplish that.
You only have to navigate to one of the locationd & then use Apply to Folders from the Folder Options dialog. Not only does that take care of all three locations, but it turns off grouping in the Common Dialogs.
