Living in the Libraries
After spending most of my computing time (6 to 12 hours per day, 6 days per week) using Windows 7 for the last several months, one of the things that I really miss badly when I have to go back to Vista or XP is the Libraries feature in Explorer. I was a bit wary of it at first. Like many long-time computer users, I'm a bit of a control freak. I didn't like the idea of accessing my data without having to know exactly where it was physically located. I guess I thought there was something noble about trekking through the file system structure to get to it.
Now I'm thoroughly indoctrinated in the new way of doing things. I absolutely love having one-click access to all my pictures, for instance, regardless of whether they're stored in my Pictures folder under my user account name, on a second partition on my hard drive, on the server, or on my other workstation upstairs. It doesn't matter - they're all there in the Pictures Library. Adding a folder to a library couldn't be easier. Just right click the library name, click the Include A Folder button and navigate in Explorer to the folder you want to add, on the local computer or on another computer on the network.
One problem you might run into when adding folders to a library occurs if the folder isn't indexed. This most often happens when you try to add a folder that's on a different computer across the network. The easiest way to deal with this is to make that folder available offline. Then offline versions of the folder's files will be created on your hard disk and added to the index on your computer. To make a folder available offline, navigate to it, right click it and select Always Available Offline. Now you should be able to add it to your library using the steps described above.
Libraries - along with other Explorer enhancements in Windows 7 - make it far easier to find the files you want without wasting precious time navigating through the file system. And I still know exactly where those files in my library really live, as the path for each folder is clearly shown in the library. Libraries don't take away any information or control from me; instead, they give me new options for getting to my destination faster.
DEBRA LITTLEJOHN SHINDER, MVP (Enterprise Security)
deb@shinder.net www.debshinder.com
Kevin on October 08, 2009 at 12:30 PM
What happens when the folder that you'd like to include in the library is on a NAS device?
shelded on October 09, 2009 at 08:51 AM
These are no better than folders with shortcuts. Those are not new.
What happens when you change jobs or roles and that hodgepodge of stuff has to surrender all the intellectual property to someone, and then has to be purged of it? A flash drive, a network drive, this folder, that folder. Oh, the humanity.
I have tried to turn off the blasted things but they don't go away. They took prominent position in Explorer, camping in my way. If we are lucky Windows 8 will make this a user-selection.
Now, when ignorant average users mis-file things in stupid places there will be no penalty for it. Libraries will find stuff, probably the Easy Transfer will find stuff. But the technician who reinstalls the OS over their badly-filed data won't find it. Oh, sorry, that's the tech's fault, not the OS.
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