Knowing the many weaknesses of Windows File Explorer, anyone needing to search for files and folders or copy and move them without opening multiple windows will find Q-Dir to be an excellent free alternative to one of the oldest and least developed tools of Microsoft’s OS. This small yet comprehensive utility provides you with everything you always wanted File Explorer to be.
The program offers you an interface where you can arrange from 1 to 4 panels in various ways, so that you can display the contents of up to four different units all at once. Besides, each of those panels supports as many tabs as you need, so the number of folders, disks, and units you can work with at a given time are nearly endless. To make things even easier, you can apply different color codes to specific type files, as well as highlight certain files by name, extension, etc. Copying or moving files and folders from one panel to another can be done using the drag-and-drop technique, or the most conventional copy-and-paste procedure.
Useful as it is, its interface is not what made me keep this tool in my desktop forever since the first time I tried it a number of versions ago. It comes packed up with a series of utilities that make it indispensable in my day-to-day work, such as the possibility of checking the size of a file or a folder (including all its subfolders) just by looking at the size column, together with the number of subfolders and files they contain. Size can be displayed in bytes, KB, MB, or GB, and you can use the Windows way or the program’s own size measuring system. It is a pity that the program cannot order the folders by size as it does with individual files – I admit that’s a feature I’d love to see implemented in the near future.
Another tiny feature that I find really useful is the Export function. It allows you to list and save as a TXT, DOC, CSV, HTML, or XLS file the contents of any disk, folder, unit, etc., in a snap, including the size of each of the elements. If only it could list not only what you can see on the screen but also the files inside each folder and subfolder, this feature would be just perfect.
The viewing, organizing, displaying, and highlighting options of this incredible tiny free tool are endless. I can’t but recommend you to download and install it on your PC or laptop and start browsing its many possibilities – it’ll make you wonder how could you put up with the unnerving limitations of File Explorer for so long.
v5.1 [May 15, 2012]
- Bug-Fix:new tab via middle mouse button
- Update the language files and adjustments in Q-Dir
- Open Quick-Link's in new tab via midl mouse button
- Open Folders via Folder menu in new tab via midl mouse button
- Disable Transparent Selection (at W7/Vista) via Menu/Extras/List-View
- Too long path, we shortened the text in the title bar correctly eg ../../file.xxx updating the language file
- Small adjustments, corrections and improvements plus updating the language files in Q-Dir.
- Small adjustments for Windows 7 & Windows 8 Treeview and List View.
- Various fixes for Windows XP and update the language files.
- Optimization and correction of the function when drag and drop the files from other programs (eg MS Explorer) in Q-Dir (move/copy)!
- List-View lose the keyboard Focus at navigation
- If Q-Dir is used as an optional default browser and system folders are open.
New:
- Scroll with space bar or scroll up with shift space bar for (The selected file does not lose the focus) scroll back to select with left or right key.
- Optimization for drag and drop
- Optimization in Tree-View Windows-7 & Windows-8
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