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I want to have some convenient way of remembering the order I put certain folders in, without being forced to rename them.

Some of these folders may get deleted and new folders also get added, so just dumping a "dir" command to a spreadsheet and sorting the result won't help - the spreadsheet would have to be updated every time a folder is added or removed.

I need something that remembers the folder arrangements that I manually made, while doing something sane with new folders that show up, either put them at the beginning or the end of the list, or somehow mark them as unsorted, I don't care. Less important, but still important, is that if a folder is deleted on disk, it disappears from this 'manually sorted view'.

I am fine with having to run another program (another file manager?), this certainly does not have to happen within Windows Explorer. I am familiar with the 'remove auto arrange in windows 7 explorer' hack, hoping that some better option exists somewhere in the world.

If there are any programs which will help me keep track of folders manually sorted in the way I've described, could you please mention it here? Thanks!

fixer1234
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user1445967
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  • No way to do this in Win7 other than the hack. If an alternate file manager is ok, why not use one that allows you to turn off auto-sort and to sort files/folders manually? If you're looking for specific suggestions, we don't do product recommendations here as per the FAQ, so just try a few and use whatever seems best. – Karan Mar 04 '13 at 01:38
  • I suppose my question is not clear - I would love if responders could provide the names of some programs which in some way will do what I am trying to accomplish. – user1445967 Mar 04 '13 at 08:42
  • Did you read my comment above? "shopping or product recommendation" are off topic as per the [FAQ](http://superuser.com/faq#questions). – Karan Mar 04 '13 at 17:32
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    http://superuser.com/questions/329127/windows-7-any-way-to-sort-folders-and-files-all-mixed-together?rq=1 http://superuser.com/questions/424639/manual-image-sorting-software http://superuser.com/questions/533386/how-can-i-click-and-drag-to-manually-sort-photos Yes I've read the FAQ. Does this mean that if a user asks 'On Windows, what is the best way to use the ICMP protocol to send an Echo to another IP address?', I am not allowed to answer the question and tell him to use PING.EXE, because some guy somewhere in the world sells a program called "MyEasyPing Pro" for $20 – user1445967 Mar 05 '13 at 05:32
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    How Disappointing. I feel foolish now for doing my homework, googling, and searching this site for half a dozen similar questions in exactly this style. This is a shopping question? Because I am asking for a thumbs up/down, pass/fail, objective, quantitative answer to 'Does a solution exist to do X?' I did not ask 'what program is "the best", the better value for the money, etc'. Not interested in discussion. Just an answer that says 'program Q has this feature'. Please take a minute to think about how it appears to say 'perhaps a solution does exist, but we are not going to tell you.' – user1445967 Mar 05 '13 at 05:32
  • I suggest you read [this](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) first. In general, the recommendation is to state your problem clearly and ask how best to solve it. If that requires a product recommendation, so be it. But questions that specifically ask for a laundry list of programs that will do Task X need to be re-worded to better conform to the FAQ's recommendations. If you feel other questions might have similar issues, feel free to flag them. – Karan Mar 05 '13 at 18:32
  • I think this question is right on the edge of being a product recommendation, and certainly isn't beyond saving. I understand that this sort of rule can seem confusing or weird for a new user, and please know that nobody's feedback is personal. I would suggest [edit]ing your question to make it clear that you're asking "How do I do _x_" rather than "what program does _x_", as that is the preferred format. The distinction seems weird at first, but we've found that asking "how do I achieve _x_" yields better answers than "what list of programs do _x_" overall. – nhinkle Apr 12 '13 at 01:55

1 Answers1

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As mentioned in this forum:

Bad news everbody. The option to manually arrange icons in explorer has bean removed in windows 7. Auto arrange cannot be disabled. Only on the desktop. For this you would not be an idiot but whoever decided to remove this feature no doubt would be.

So, you can only arrange icons by "nothing" on the desktop.

TFM
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dudeofea
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