Understanding Windows Explorer View Modes

The way Windows presents your files and folders isn't always the best way. In addition to the default icons view, you can have Windows list your files as a list; useful for folders containing a lot of files, as a series of thumbnails or as a filmstrip, useful for folders containing pictures. When you're working with Windows Explorer you can view files in a variety of ways by toggling through the different view modes.

Today, I am going to show you the different View modes available in Windows Explorer. Now, the one currently being shown is called Filmstrip because it runs like a filmstrip across the bottom and then shows you each file up above. Now, to change the View mode, we click View. Now the next one available is called Thumbnails. What this does is it show you a small thumbnail image of each file. Now, because this is my Icons folder, you’re seeing graphical images but if it was folder full of word documents, you would see the appropriate thumbnails for those. The next one available is called Tiles. Now, what this does is tile all of the files in the folder; much like you would tile a series of Windows that lays them out so that you can see more of the files in your folder. The next one available is called Icons. What this does is it shows you an icon of the file type, so that in this case again we’re looking at icons so you’re seeing images but it would show the appropriate icon for each file. Now, you’ll notice if I highlight over a file, I can see the type of file that it is and also its size. The next View mode is called List. And List can be very handy because it gives you just the list of the file names. So, that if you’re looking for a particular document or graphic; say turtle1, you could find it quite easily. And then my personal favorite is Details and Details shows you everything there is to know about a file. It show you the name, file size, the file type and the date and time that it was last modified, that is handy information to have. So, those are the View modes from Windows Explorer and that’s all there is to it.