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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:
This is the solution i'm looking for
Open File Explorer Options
Clear History & close it
Open ONE folder ONLY in "Icon View"
Your standard sort folders or files, is to right click in the folders open area &
select >>Sort By>>Name
Now open up Open File Explorer Options again
View Tab
Now Tic any box Twice to activate the "APPLY" button.
Click on "Apply" on bottom right.
Now click on "Apply to folders" button & OK to close.
Close the open window.
"NOW SIGN OUT & SIGN BACK IN TO SAVE THE SETTINGS"
This link covers some Folder & file settings
Setting columns for details view has 5 categories. General is useless.
The columns will be different for different types of files.
You can run these 3 commands as admin in command prompt.
Right click on start menu button>>Command Prompt (ADMIN).
(Copy and Paste) one at a time and press enter. Then the next one when the previous one completes.
sfc /scannow
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
Restart PC.
You led me to the solution. Please note the extra step below.
This is a horrible bug that caused me lots of pain... downloading files again... lots of expense. Somebody gave me a few bad days. I appreciate that the software "works as designed", but the design is a bug. a bad one. one that should get someone fired bad. The option is really cool... but this probably costs thousands of dollars of damage each day.
>>There is no bug.
Yes there is! I couldn't do my work and it took an hour to solve!
>>Someone at Microsoft just managed to apply their default folder setting to everyone that installs the update.
Ok, there is a bug.
To turn off file grouping feature:
- Open a folder that is Grouping by/sorting using week and month.
- Find a spot in the file explorer windows that is not covered by a file, that menu won't have "group by" in it.. You may have to collapse all groups by right clicking on a header (like this week, or earlier to day, or 5 minutes ago, or ...
- Right Click in the folder
- Select 'Group by'
- Select '(None)'
Thank you. It is so insanely annoying that some programmer somewhere decides what's best for me and forces it on me and I have to figure out how to undo the unhelpful feature. Obviously, like a rodent must incessantly chew, s/he has to continue to tweak things or he'll be out of a job. Oops.
