Make the most of Windows 7’s Libraries

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	TOP STORY[/size][/font] Make the most of Windows 7’s Libraries[/size][/size]
	By Fred Langa Libraries — special-purpose virtual folders — can be confusing at first. But they are extremely handy, once you get the hang of them. How to use Libraries is hard to describe but easier to understand when you see them in action — and that’s what this article will show you.[/size]

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The full text of this column is posted at WindowsSecrets.com/2011/03/10/01 (opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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I think I’d find the Libraries facility much more useful if I could add individual files to a library, rather than whole folders. Is there a way to do that?

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I think I’d find the Libraries facility much more useful if I could add individual files to a library, rather than whole folders. Is there a way to do that?

No. According to the second paragraph in the article, which is the Microsoft definition of a library, it is folders only.

Joe

--Joe

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In my house I have 5 working computers. Three of them run Windows 7, but one of them is a MacbookAir that runs Windows 7 as a Parallels Virtual machine, and another one is a dual boot machine that mostly runs Linux. Apart from that I have two PCs that run Vista. Needless to say the Libraries feature only recognises Windows 7 machines, so although its useful on my primary Windows 7 machine, most of the benefits ascribed to it by Fred don’t apply to my situation. I suppose I could upgrade the two Vista machines in the house, but one belongs to my wife, who doesn’t like change in her computer environment, and the effort required doesn’t really appeal. Vista isn’t nearly as bad as it’s been painted.

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In my house I have 5 working computers. Three of them run Windows 7, but one of them is a MacbookAir that runs Windows 7 as a Parallels Virtual machine, and another one is a dual boot machine that mostly runs Linux. Apart from that I have two PCs that run Vista. Needless to say the Libraries feature only recognises Windows 7 machines, so although its useful on my primary Windows 7 machine, most of the benefits ascribed to it by Fred don’t apply to my situation. I suppose I could upgrade the two Vista machines in the house, but one belongs to my wife, who doesn’t like change in her computer environment, and the effort required doesn’t really appeal. Vista isn’t nearly as bad as it’s been painted.

I also have a Netgear Stora with a 1TB capacity that I am moving towards using for all my large media files. What happens when I try to add a folder on that to a Windows 7 library? I get the useful suggestion that if I make the folder available offline I can do it – this involves copying all the files on my NAS device back onto my computer. How useful is that?

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I think I’d find the Libraries facility much more useful if I could add individual files to a library, rather than whole folders. Is there a way to do that?

If you wish to add just certain files rather than the entire folder they are in, create a new folder that just includes the files in question, then put that folder into the newly created library.

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It’s great to have all those views nicely sorted and organised for you but how do you back them up? They are scattered all over the place, and as far as I know there is no way that you can do a backup of those scattered files…. I know that the libraries function can bring things together nicely for you – if you could use that to make a backup to some other location, that would be great – anyone know how?

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Hello,

Can we add locations from other computers, servers ?

kind regards,
wim.

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Hello,

Can we add locations from other computers, servers ?

kind regards,
wim.

The gist of Fred’s column is that yes you can do this. He has created Libraries that include folders from various PC’s, I would assume over his network.

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The gist of Fred’s column is that yes you can do this. He has created Libraries that include folders from various PC’s, I would assume over his network.

Sadly, MS tried to cripple libraries a bit by trying to require network shares to be synchronised before they can be added to a library. But the best workaround I’ve found to that is a handy tool called Win 7 Library Tool – get it here . This GREATLY increases the value of libraries to anyone with a multi-computer setup (which seems like most of us by now!!!)

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I store all of my media on a NAS hard drive and have found this tool invaluable for adding the remote folders to my Win7 libraries including indexing their contents and making them searchable.

http://zornsoftware.talsit.info/

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Sadly, MS tried to cripple libraries a bit by trying to require network shares to be synchronised before they can be added to a library. But the best workaround I’ve found to that is a handy tool called Win 7 Library Tool – get it here . This GREATLY increases the value of libraries to anyone with a multi-computer setup (which seems like most of us by now!!!)

@Fred: There’s a some confusion running around on the ‘net about whether Libraries can include network folders and, if so, how best to do it (Google: “windows 7” libraries include network). stualden (quoted, above) points to one solution I’ve heard of, but there’s also a relevant discussion on the WindowsSevenForums. (Parenthetically, the “always available offline” solution looks brain-dead to me, as it seems to work against the whole reason for network storage–but maybe I’m misunderstanding something.)

In any case, I’m wondering what an enterprise user (with an uncooperative IT group) can do to include network folders in a Library without having to involve his IT group (if anything is possible without taking that step). Would you please consider writing a follow-up article to discuss this issue? Enterprise users may be the people who can get the most benefit from using Libraries, but it seems to me that they are also facing the most obstacles to doing so.

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I think the concept of libraries is worthy. However, the implementation leaves much to be desired. Support forums all over the net are rife with complaints about the so-called library refresh bug. MS has known about this bug from as far back as Vista release and has yet to offer a reliable fix.

The bug causes information displayed in Windows explorer to be stale. For example, if you open a library, open, edit and save a file, the modified time-stamp is not updated. Similarly if you delete a file it continues to be listed in the explorer window.

Based on these problems I have seriously considered removing the libraries feature, but I do like the “Recent Places” link which depends on libraries.

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It’s great to have all those views nicely sorted and organised for you but how do you back them up? They are scattered all over the place, and as far as I know there is no way that you can do a backup of those scattered files…. I know that the libraries function can bring things together nicely for you – if you could use that to make a backup to some other location, that would be great – anyone know how?

I don’t know how other backup programs see the libraries, but Win 7’s built-in backup utility allows the libraries to be selected for backup just like standard folders. I don’t do this because I backup by partition/hard drive but the option is there. The built-in backup is actually more flexible than I expected it to be. Probably not enough for some users but we all have different needs and it meets mine adequately.

Why are you encouraging MS to add complexity when it is not required ?
Just let us create a Folder like say “C:Data and then create appropriate sub folders.
You may say that we are still allowed to do that.
But if people keep submitting to (and praising) MS inane changes (Win 7 Start Menu, Ribbon, Libraries), then MS will be encouraged to do more (aka restrict us more) in future OS’s
Rob

Maybe because a lot of people find it useful? I just got my first Win 7 computer last week and I already utilize the library feature extensively. One of the things that I wanted to do on this desktop that wasn’t an option with my laptops was move my user data to a secondary hard drive and distribute various user file types among different partitions for a custom backup imaging scheme. It took literally less than five minutes to create new folders in the correct locations and change the library folders.

I also have several applications that get or create files that need to be imported into another application. I just add the file locations for those apps to a library and navigate there with the importing app, sort by date, and there are all of the day’s files ready to be imported, even though they are actually residing in 5 different folders.

I would say the libraries are actually *less* restrictive than previous methods because we now get to tell Windows exactly where we want our stuff to be instead of jumping through hoops to change the default locations. Two users can now use the same Video or Music locations, for example, with just a few clicks.

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Nice article Fred, made it clear exactly how “Libraries” function.

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Is there a way to change the assigned icon to the library ?

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Fred, it is an absolutely amazing article for us common folks who ‘Don’t know we don’t know.’ Thank you.

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Great Article by Fred Langa in today’s Window’s Secrets!!! ThanX Fred!:rolleyes:

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Fred’s “aha” moments parallel my own. At first I just wanted to get rid of the feature to conserve space; now I use it almost exclusively.

For me the breakthrough came when I changed the “Arrange by” from the default Folders view to Name view. A sorted list by name across all of the different Documents locations showed many duplicates — but of course not where they were actually saved. A right-click in the list headers to add “Folder path” let me see at a glance which of the duplicates were safe to delete. (Mind you, it helps to have a wide screen to display long path names…)

My advice to anyone railing against Libraries would be to spend some time with it. Follow Fred’s tutorial and experience your own “aha” moments.

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The advantage to a kind of “pointer” system of organizing files is that you can cross-categorize them in a number of ways.. e.g., a virtual folder of all PowerPoint slides alongside a virtual folder of some specific content in which some of the same PowerPoint files might also be found. You could have always done this by using shortcuts in folders (so as to need only one “real” location) but that’s a pain and gets you intro trouble if you move the real file’s location.

So libraries can be great, but to really be helpful, you now need to store the real files in the smallest meaningful folder that can then be virtually merged into any number of future libraries… I don’t think that’s an easy thing to do. That’s why it would be so much more helpful to be able to include/exclude individual files (though a lot more background housekeeping, of course). Sharepoint offers an alternative to all this by essentially creating a database of files that allow you to “query” them in any number of ways depending on how many and what fields you created for your file content (using metacontent or tags or whatever).

For now, I seem to be migrating to a system in which I depend more on high-speed searching and caring less where ANY file might be stored… I haven’t take the leap to just making one huge “bin,” yet, but with proper tagging or fast content search, it almost doesn’t matter how you organize the files.

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I find libraries quite useful for finding things, but using a library from a Save dialog can be quite confusing. If I just save to a library, I can’t tell where the file will actually wind up. To ensure the file goes where I want it, I wind up playing games with changing views. That can be a big nuisance if you’re doing it a lot. Is there an easier way?

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using a library from a Save dialog can be quite confusing. If I just save to a library, I can’t tell where the file will actually wind up.

See eg Fig 8 in Fred’s article. Note the “Default save location” beside his first ‘real’ folder. That’s where files saved to the WS Demo library will be saved. You can of course change it.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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Thanks for the clear post especially the reference to Tags. I thought to myself that this is my “aha” moment, but turned out to be an “OhNo”. I have a lot of downloaded course material which happens to be in pdf, swf .. types of files – no tags.

At least your positive words will cause me to explore the benefit of Libraries.

Thanks
Truman

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Fred’s article on Win7 libraries is outstanding. I’ve long been a Langa fan because he has a fantastic ability to select practical topics and provide logical, succinct, and understandable information. We need more of this kind of material in Windows Secrets versus some of the esoteric stuff that likely is not of value except to a small number of computer geniuses. Short of overworking him, let’s have more from Fred!

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Great Article Fred and thanks…. you may have just saved the day for me on an upcoming project!

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When I look at the “arrange by” there is no “Name” option for any of my folders

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When I look at the “arrange by” there is no “Name” option for any of my folders

Whether you’ll see “Name” as an “Arrange by:” option depends on how the library is “optimized.” Right-click on any library (in Explorer’s left pane) and select “Properties”–you’ll see an “Optimize this library for:” selection about half-way down the dialog box. Your “Arrange by:” options are determined by which optimization you choose, with “General items,” “Documents,” and “Videos” allowing for sorting by name.

Granted these so-called optimizations are MS’s arbitrary decisions about what you’ll need (why no “Custom” selection, where we can pick our own sort categories?), but there’s usually at least one selection that will give you what you want–just don’t get hung up on the optimization names.

One other thing: If your selected optimization doesn’t give you the file viewing style you want (“Large icon,” “List,” “Details,” etc.), you can still set that manually, just as you can in any other Explorer folder view.

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Whether you’ll see “Name” as an “Arrange by:” option depends on how the library is “optimized.” Right-click on any library (in Explorer’s left pane) and select “Properties”–you’ll see an “Optimize this library for:” selection about half-way down the dialog box. Your “Arrange by:” options are determined by which optimization you choose, with “General items,” “Documents,” and “Videos” allowing for sorting by name.

Granted these so-called optimizations are MS’s arbitrary decisions about what you’ll need (why no “Custom” selection, where we can pick our own sort categories?), but there’s usually at least one selection that will give you what you want–just don’t get hung up on the optimization names.

One other thing: If your selected optimization doesn’t give you the file viewing style you want (“Large icon,” “List,” “Details,” etc.), you can still set that manually, just as you can in any other Explorer folder view.

The problem is not getting the proper list – the problem is that the only thing selectable in the Arrange By list is Folder. Nothing is actively selectable – they are ‘grayed out’ more or less.

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The problem is not getting the proper list – the problem is that the only thing selectable in the Arrange By list is Folder. Nothing is actively selectable – they are ‘grayed out’ more or less.

Sorry, colblip–I was responding to sailster’s issue, not yours.

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Why are you encouraging MS to add complexity when it is not required ?
Just let us create a Folder like say “C:Data and then create appropriate sub folders.
You may say that we are still allowed to do that.
But if people keep submitting to (and praising) MS inane changes (Win 7 Start Menu, Ribbon, Libraries), then MS will be encouraged to do more (aka restrict us more) in future OS’s
Rob
PS Try changing the Win 7 Start menu to get as close to Classic as possible.
You will find that attempts to re-organize the Start Menu items, gets near impossible, as MS blocks access that we used to have.
PPS
There is another fan of MS changes on this web site –
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-tips/five-tips-for-efficient-file-management-in-windows-7/703?tag=nl.e101
My comment was added there, a few hours ago. Look for ‘SHEEP’ in the Title
PPPS
On a constructive note, I have added another comment on that site, providing a link to this article. Those (over there), that love the Libraries, will learn more from your article.
I assume that membership is required to read your article, so this should add more members.

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Why are you encouraging MS to add complexity when it is not required ?
Just let us create a Folder like say “C:Data and then create appropriate sub folders.

I think that I get your point, and it may well be on-target for a home user. In an enterprise computing environment (and possibly a SOHO environment) where files just continue to pile up year after year, there is a sharp distinction between organizing files for archival purposes and organizing them for an active project. Projects often need to pull together files/folders from many different archival locations (locations that make sense for archival purposes, so no, we don’t want to reorganize them permanently).

Before Libraries, less-sophisticated users would scatter shortcuts across their desktops of all the “project” files they needed (I’ve seen desktops where you can barely see the background image). More-sophisticated users might create project folders to contain those shortcuts. In either case, searching (and sorting, in the case of project folders) was limited to the shortcut name.

If full content searching or metadata searching/sorting was needed to support the project, then the archival files would need to be “checked out” for the project (i.e., moved to a permanent project folder), then correctly returned to their original locations at the end of the project so that others could find and use the file in the future (good luck with that!). In the case of read-only files that were needed for reference only, this latter approach would mean that either (1) only one user at a time would know where the “checked out” file was located or (2) the user who “checked out” the file couldn’t know if the file owner had important updates for the reference information (which couldn’t be added/edited in until the file was checked back in, of course).

As you can see, this latter approach is so clunky that most organizations would rather just suffer along with the simpler “shortcuts only” approaches, even though this has the potential for greatly slowing down their work. (In part, this situation was something that the enterprise document management apps that became prevalent in the 1990s were created to address. Their popularity has been limited due to cost, scope limitations, and that dreaded “extra layer of complexity” that resulted from feature bloat.)

With Libraries, we can now create a Library for each project whose content is fully searchable and can be arranged by metadata other than just the filename, achieving virtual aggregation of selected folders/files without having to manage their physical locations or restricting their use to a single project, and while allowing for updates to reference files at any time. This “virtual folder” approach is an elegant, organic, and free alternative to a document management system (albeit more limited in its ambitions) and a major step forward for the enterprise computing environment. To the extent that a SOHO or even individual user has just such a combination of archive/project requirements (and Fred’s example of his digital photo library is one such valid example), Libraries can be a godsend to them, as well.

If you don’t have any such needs, feel free to delete all of the MS-supplied default Libraries–in time, I’m sure that you’ll be able to ignore that one empty top-level Library folder in Explorer, and just get on with your own blissful computing life.

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thanks for the story. At the end you should have had the readers delete the WS Demo library. It was a little scary deleting it.

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I’ve been using the Libraries feature for some time, but Fred’s article reminded me that I would like to create a library of my emails for easy searching. I have two folders containing the “pst” files from Outlook (2003 version) and so created the library and added the folders. So far, so good. When I tried some searches on known contents I received no hits, so something is not working as I’d hoped.

If I try the same search from the “orb” then I get the hits I expect. I realize that the pst files have to be open in Outlook for any search to work, but I do wonder why searching a library containing them does not work.

Any ideas?

Jim

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Very good article, Fred
I must agree with RobCr fully.
And if I may add my 2cents to the discussion with some suggestions.
I also feel “Libraries” are another nuisance-layer that is contributing to the complexity of visualizing and virtualizing data[/i], that is ultimately stored as a bunch of bits in hardware (local and/or networked).
I can fully sympathize with many of the members that have migrated to the “Libraries” since the current Explorer (born as ‘FileManager’ then ‘WindowsExplorer’) can be tricky/finicky tool to search/locate/navigate to desired data (in the form of folders/files).
I consider these “Libraries” the equivalent of ‘band-aids’ to cover skin cancer.:huh:
If we can all agree that the whole file management task (at the hardware layer) is a complex entity and it has always morphed along the analogue of Moore’s Law; then we can also conclude that Libraries are yet another attempt by the Operating System to allow user to somehow ‘connect and engage’ with data that is continually growing in content and quantity.
I am certain there will be many more band-aid (Ahem >> placebo) fixes to the file management system that is almost inherently flawed and has become way too bloated.

*Please allow me to hark back to the old DOS {unix?} days of 8 character limitation to file/data naming.
*And also please remember the old adage about “Garbage In; Garbage Out”
I mention the above, as the responsibilities of the data[/i] owner/user still has not changed one iota, after all these years.
Things like “Libraries” become superfluous if the user is (and has always been) diligent about properly ‘folderizing’, organizing and naming data[/i].
As Microsoft (itself) states in the link Fred provided:

Libraries… making it easier…

Which pre-supposes that it was nasty to begin with and will continue to be upgraded. As a user, our only due diligence can be to continually pay attention to proper “data management” to work in concert with the short comings of our computers ‘file management” system.
Just throwing (for example) all your digital photos in stacks labeled “2011” (or “2010”) and then hoping that the “Libraries” somehow and magically do your thinking and data management responsibilities for you is like waiting for a miracle to sort out the GIGO.
I proudly maintain my own data and donot need another layer of complexity to my data retrieval chores.

But can someone please answer the following two Win7 nits for me:
[INDENT]1. How to prevent Win7 from renaming my own “_DocZ” folder to “Documents” without user consent?
2. How can I prioritize Explorer to display the physical/hardware (aka ‘Computer’) content before the Libraries enumerations?[/INDENT]

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In the good old days, XP allowed you to put pics in the pictures folder, music in ETC. Now it seems us slaves have to create a folder, name it, put stuff in it then go to liberties sorry libraries and tell it where to find them.

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From the article, one should be able to “Go on! Try the Arrange by: Name filter on your new library.” However, other than Folder and Clear Changes I can not select any other item – grayed out.

Any suggestions?

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From the article, one should be able to “Go on! Try the Arrange by: Name filter on your new library.” However, other than Folder and Clear Changes I can not select any other item – grayed out.

Any suggestions?

I was hoping someone knew a solution to this problem. It appears others have it as well as me. I’ve searched the net and so far have been unable to find a fix.

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Me too. I can add all the folders I want, but my view is stuck in “Arrange by..Folder. No other choice is allowed, although at least mine are not gray. If you cannot rearrange folder contents out of the folders, what use is it? Internet search => possible indexing issue. Checked that, still stuck in Folders. As a friend once said, this is another Microsoft Moment.

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At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, neither you, nor anyone else, has explained why this system is any better than using the existing folder/file system to organize information. Why create yet another filing system when your files have already been assigned to one to start with? if you can’t keep your existing folder system in order (which i admit is somewhat challenging), why would you expect that creating another redundant system create any more order? And once your library system becomes hopelessly disordered, will Microsoft create another one to overlay that? i thought one of the goals of engineering was to reduce complexity and redundancy… but maybe i’m jut not a game-changer… david

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At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, neither you, nor anyone else, has explained why this system is any better than using the existing folder/file system to organize information.

I think that you’re missing the point: This isn’t a matter of “better”, as in a replacement–Libraries simply allow you to virtually aggregate files from multiple folders into different views of your files than those allowed in Explorer by the existing file/folder structure. In most cases, this would be a temporary, project-oriented view.

In Fred’s digital photo example, he has (we can assume) good reasons for having his photos arranged primarily by year, probably with subfolders within each “year” folder. I’d guess that each of his “year” folders contains a “Christmas” folder, for example. When he wanted to gather all of his Christmas photos from across the years (perhaps to create a “family Christmas retrospective” document or slide show), pulling all of those “Christmas” folders into a library and flattening it (arranging by date rather than by folder), he would be able to see all of his Christmas photos together, making for an easier task of selecting which ones would suit his current project. Then, having finished this task, he could delete this project library (so it didn’t clutter up his top-level Explorer view).

Alternatively, if Fred had already taken the time to tag all of his Christmas photos with a “Christmas” tag, then he could have used the default Pictures Library, arranging that by the “Tag” selection–the Christmas photos would automatically be grouped together. Double-clicking the Christmas group would expand that group into its own Explorer view, allowing for all the standard views and sorting options. This would be a more ad-hoc solution than creating a dedicated Christmas Library, however–each time he went back to work on the files in his Christmas project, he’d have to reselect the Tag view and drill back down to his Christmas photos. IMO, using a dedicated Library for the duration of the project is a bit cleaner.

Granted, Libraries could be used in an attempt to rationalize a poorly-organized file/folder structure when it might make more sense (in the long run) to fix the file/folder structure. Fred’s example of pulling together his mp3s from across multiple networked PCs comes to mind–perhaps he’d be better off if they were all on one PC. His example of pulling all those folders into a library in order to find and delete duplicates is still a good example of a temporary project, however, if his immediate objective was to save storage space (or something like that).

Again, the purpose of Libraries is not to replace (or even “overlay,” in a permanent sense) the existing file system, but to supplement it in ways that support temporary needs that don’t neatly align with the long-term file/folder organization plan. If you have no such projects, or if your folder structure design is such that it supports any file retrieval project need that you have, then by all means feel free to ignore Libraries as being unhelpful to you.

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For more info on Libraries read the L Section at Windows Seven Forums

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Good article, it explains the somewhat mysterious “Libraries” which MS didn’t for users of Win7. But it just confirms that MS continues to be behind the Internet curve.

[*] The libraries only work on Win7. MS continues thinking everybody uses only MS products.
[*] Only folders can be added, not individual files.
[*] Libraries work only over a LAN. Not so useful for home use, somewhat more for business, if someone sets it up.

And the most important: libraries are still PC-centric. The connected world is moving away from mere PCs, and even LANs, to keeping things on Internet storage (the “Cloud”), so your important files, notes, pictures, etc are available all the time from any device you own: desktop, laptop, netbook, tablet, smartphone. And from any OS: W2K, XP, Vista, Win7, MacOS, iOS, Android, Ubuntu/Linux.

Like most people, I have a mix of internet devices at home, and only two use Windows 7. After getting an iPhone last year I took the time to move all my email and important files and notes to the Internet, using IMAP (email), Google calender (schedule, to-do, contacts), Evernote, and Dropbox, primarily. EyeFi automatically uploads photos from my iPhone and Canon camera (special SD card).

I use Win7 libraries only as shortcuts to where my desired folders are on my desktop machine. The real power comes from ubiquitous access to data anywhere.

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The libraries only work on Win7. MS continues thinking everybody uses only MS products.

Since Libraries are a feature of the operating system, what else would you expect them to do, other than work in Win7?

Only folders can be added, not individual files.

Yeah, I’m missing that, too, but I suspect that it’s a technical limitation, not simply something that MS overlooked.

Libraries work only over a LAN. Not so useful for home use, somewhat more for business, if someone sets it up.

Actually, Libraries work quite well on local HDDs; the default Libraries in a Win7 installation are all local, after all.

And the most important: libraries are still PC-centric. The connected world is moving away from mere PCs, and even LANs, to keeping things on Internet storage (the “Cloud”), so your important files, notes, pictures, etc are available all the time from any device you own: desktop, laptop, netbook, tablet, smartphone. And from any OS: W2K, XP, Vista, Win7, MacOS, iOS, Android, Ubuntu/Linux.

Yeah, cloud storage is problematic for the whole Libraries scheme–but then, I doubt that MS ever thought of Libraries as being a comprehensive, aggregate-all-storage-locations solution. It just is what it is–a good tool for making ad hoc collections of files that are stored in separate folders. Shooting for anything more than that would have been hugely more complicated–full-fledged document management apps for local network files are enormously difficult to develop, so just imagine how hard it would be to get that right for WAN/cloud file storage, too.

Like most people, I have a mix of internet devices at home, and only two use Windows 7. After getting an iPhone last year I took the time to move all my email and important files and notes to the Internet, using IMAP (email), Google calender (schedule, to-do, contacts), Evernote, and Dropbox, primarily. EyeFi automatically uploads photos from my iPhone and Canon camera (special SD card).

I use Win7 libraries only as shortcuts to where my desired folders are on my desktop machine. The real power comes from ubiquitous access to data anywhere.

It’s a traditional trade-off: Either greater flexibility with less ubiquity, or vice versa. Sometimes you just can’t have it all–and I don’t see any point in dissing MS for at least giving us the flexibility option (and in a simple, usable form that I’ve not seen elsewhere).

I guess it can’t hurt to wish for more, though.

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Since Libraries are a feature of the operating system, what else would you expect them to do, other than work in Win7?

Yeah, I’m missing that, too, but I suspect that it’s a technical limitation, not simply something that MS overlooked.

Actually, Libraries work quite well on local HDDs; the default Libraries in a Win7 installation are all local, after all.

Yeah, cloud storage is problematic for the whole Libraries scheme–but then, I doubt that MS ever thought of Libraries as being a comprehensive, aggregate-all-storage-locations solution. It just is what it is–a good tool for making ad hoc collections of files that are stored in separate folders. Shooting for anything more than that would have been hugely more complicated–full-fledged document management apps for local network files are enormously difficult to develop, so just imagine how hard it would be to get that right for WAN/cloud file storage, too.

It’s a traditional trade-off: Either greater flexibility with less ubiquity, or vice versa. Sometimes you just can’t have it all–and I don’t see any point in dissing MS for at least giving us the flexibility option (and in a simple, usable form that I’ve not seen elsewhere).

I guess it can’t hurt to wish for more, though.

Since this is essentially “V1” of Libraries it will be interesting to see what happens in the next version of Windows.

Joe

--Joe

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Hey Fred,
I found your article about Windows libraries quite helpful, thanks. But, I have a slightly different requirement that I don’t think libraries will work for and was hoping you could help.
My company builds widgets. We sell 3 types of widgets, the plain widget, the enhanced widget and the super widget. I have 3 documents in a folder. The first one tells how to build the plain widget, the second tells how to add on the components to make it an enhanced widget and the third one tells how to add on the components to make an enhanced widget a super widget. This is an overly simplified example, in reality we have thousands of documents that describe how to build our widgets but you get the idea.
I now want to have 1 folder that contains all the documents on how to build a plain widget, another folder that contains all the documents on how to build an enhanced widget and a third folder that contains all the documents on how to build a super widget. It’s very possible for the original document to change so when it does, I want it to change in all 3 locations.
I could use windows shortcuts to point to the original files but to be honest I just don’t believe them to be robust enough (I don’t trust that they will work over the long haul especially if the original moves, which may not be a hard requirement).
Do you have any ideas on how I can solve this problem? Do you know of any tools that will do this?
Thanks for your help
Papes

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Hey Fred,
I found your article about Windows libraries quite helpful, thanks. But, I have a slightly different requirement that I don’t think libraries will work for and was hoping you could help.
My company builds widgets. We sell 3 types of widgets, the plain widget, the enhanced widget and the super widget. I have 3 documents in a folder. The first one tells how to build the plain widget, the second tells how to add on the components to make it an enhanced widget and the third one tells how to add on the components to make an enhanced widget a super widget. This is an overly simplified example, in reality we have thousands of documents that describe how to build our widgets but you get the idea.
I now want to have 1 folder that contains all the documents on how to build a plain widget, another folder that contains all the documents on how to build an enhanced widget and a third folder that contains all the documents on how to build a super widget. It’s very possible for the original document to change so when it does, I want it to change in all 3 locations.
I could use windows shortcuts to point to the original files but to be honest I just don’t believe them to be robust enough (I don’t trust that they will work over the long haul especially if the original moves, which may not be a hard requirement).
Do you have any ideas on how I can solve this problem? Do you know of any tools that will do this?
Thanks for your help
Papes

A folder can participate in more than one library. So, you could have a folder called “common” (or whatever you want) that contains documents common to all the widgets. The you could have a folder for each widget type that contains the unique documents for a particular widget type. Then create a library that has the unique folder for a wdiget type and the common folder. When a user accesses a Widget type library all the documents from both folders will appear.

Joe

--Joe

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My company builds widgets. We sell 3 types of widgets, the plain widget, the enhanced widget and the super widget…we have thousands of documents that describe how to build our widgets…
I now want to have 1 folder that contains all the documents on how to build a plain widget, another folder that contains all the documents on how to build an enhanced widget and a third folder that contains all the documents on how to build a super widget. It’s very possible for the original document to change so when it does, I want it to change in all 3 locations.

Unlike Fred’s examples of using Libraries to automatically aggregate files from multiple folders into a single virtual view, you’re wanting automatic disaggregation into three different virtual views–a much trickier task. I suppose you could cleverly name your files so that filtering the files list in Explorer would give you the three views that you want, but that would require renaming those thousands of files.

If you really need to have the flexibility of those three views, would you consider separating the three classes of files into three folders, then using Libraries to create the aggregated views that you want? It would take some work (how much depends on whether the current file names allow you to sort the existing folder into the three classes), but in the end you’d have exactly what you say you need.

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I like your article in libraries, but I have a related question: the search box. Any text entered there causes a search of file names and contents. But you can add keywords preceeding the text to search for dates, file age, file name only. I am looking for a definitive list of keywords and examples of their use. Point me to an article if this has been covered, or write one for the newsletter.

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Fred,

Very good article, another Win7 feature that will come in handy.

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VERY nicely-done. Value-added for sure. Thanks, Fred.

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The link jumps to “10 bizarre sports events you never heard off”

I have a problem with libraries in that the view tab has ‘Arrange by’ but when I open the folder through the normal methods is has ‘Group by’ instead, caused a lot of confusion when trying to get my wifes laptop to show what my computer was displaying.

So how can I get the view tab to be the same? As it appears Libraries changes the entries in View tab.

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I ran an avg program which was suppose to “clean up” my computer. Afterwards my libraries folders were empty I would like to know how to restore them.

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I ran an avg program which was suppose to “clean up” my computer. Afterwards my libraries folders were empty I would like to know how to restore them.

Hi Lena,

Welcome to the Lounge.

Does your cleaner program have an undo functionality? That would probably be the first way to try to solve the issue.

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Lena, Right click on the Documents Library folder in windows explorer and select properties. Is there anything listed in the library locations box?
If nothing is listed, see Include folders in a Library to add them back.

Jerry

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After years of careful partitioning across multiple drives as the best way of organizing my files (OS and Apps on SSD 0, Business Data, Personal Data, Photos and Temp/Swap on HD1 partitions D, E, F and G; Images on HD2, and Syncs on HD3, etc.) I usually found what I was looking for fairly quickly. Win 7’s improved Indexing made my searches even better, looking within mailbox.pst and word docs, etc. Mac lovers laugh at me – saying I’m dwelling in the dark ages. My wife’s files are scattered all over her one Mac HD, and she doesn’t care where they are because OS X knows where they are.

So, I took a look at Libraries and thought, maybe I can improve it more. As an experiment, I created a new folder under the Photo library, pointing to my E (Photos) partition on HD 1. In itself, that partition had dozens of folders mirroring my Photoshop Elements tagging, e.g. People, Places, Events and Other. Well, with lots of backups on hand, I tried a few moves working within Win 7’s Photo Library. I moved a photo Library Photos folder (People) to my Library Photo Places folder. It took awhile, which I found worrisome, as if real data was being moved around. I assumed I was moving only the Library’s links, not actual files. Wrong! Using Explorer to open up the source E partition, I found my People folder had become a subfolder under Places. In other words, the concept that organizing data views within Libraries does not move actual files was not true. Had I deleted a Library folder, the data would have been in the Recycle Bin! For now, I’m sticking to my organized by drive/partition/folder approach and not trusting Libraries to preserve my data.

What was I doing wrong?

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After years of careful partitioning across multiple drives as the best way of organizing my files (OS and Apps on SSD 0, Business Data, Personal Data, Photos and Temp/Swap on HD1 partitions D, E, F and G; Images on HD2, and Syncs on HD3, etc.) I usually found what I was looking for fairly quickly. Win 7’s improved Indexing made my searches even better, looking within mailbox.pst and word docs, etc. Mac lovers laugh at me – saying I’m dwelling in the dark ages. My wife’s files are scattered all over her one Mac HD, and she doesn’t care where they are because OS X knows where they are.

My wife is the family Mac user, too. She doesn’t think much about folder organization either, until she can’t remember what she named a file or think of the right keyword(s) to search for it–then she wishes she’d given more time to organization! Not that browsing to a file in Finder would be a piece of cake, since it lacks a true folder-tree view (and yes, I’ve used Macs since 1996, and have always thought that was a major defect in Finder, just like I’ve thought that the absence of a Delete key is a defect).

So, I took a look at Libraries and thought, maybe I can improve it more. As an experiment, I created a new folder under the Photo library, pointing to my E (Photos) partition on HD 1. In itself, that partition had dozens of folders mirroring my Photoshop Elements tagging, e.g. People, Places, Events and Other. Well, with lots of backups on hand, I tried a few moves working within Win 7’s Photo Library. I moved a photo Library Photos folder (People) to my Library Photo Places folder. It took awhile, which I found worrisome, as if real data was being moved around. I assumed I was moving only the Library’s links, not actual files. Wrong! Using Explorer to open up the source E partition, I found my People folder had become a subfolder under Places. In other words, the concept that organizing data views within Libraries does not move actual files was not true. Had I deleted a Library folder, the data would have been in the Recycle Bin! For now, I’m sticking to my organized by drive/partition/folder approach and not trusting Libraries to preserve my data.

What was I doing wrong?

Your mistake was in assuming that Libraries use “links” (as if they were collections of shortcuts/aliases). What Libraries provide is another way of looking at the actual files, regardless of their actual folder organization; when you move or delete a file or folder in a Library, you’re actually working on the real file or folder, not some pointer.

So understanding that, how could Libraries be useful? Let’s look at your picture-organization example.

First, select your Pictures Library in Explorer–in the default view you will see, of course, all folders that you’ve added to the Pictures Library. Now note the “Arrange by:” dropdown in the top right corner of the right-side pane–this is where the magic of Libraries happens. Click on the dropdown arrow, and you’ll see your other options (besides “by folder”) for viewing your pictures. Without physically moving around your files, you can see all of them arranged by the creation month, for example, without regard to which folder each photo actually resides in.

Given that “Tag” (i.e. metadata) is one of your choices, what this would allow you to do is just save your pictures by creation batch, tag your photos (even with multiple tags), then view all photos with a given tag grouped together in the Pictures Library. If a photo has more than one tag, then it will appear in each tag group in the Pictures Library, even though only one physical copy of the photo exists.

So what’s the advantage? Instead of spending your time sorting your photos into folders by tag (and maybe creating multiple copies of the same photo if more than one tag applies, or else being limited to only a single tag), you just let Windows take care of the tag groupings automatically through the Pictures Library. Further, if you later decide that your tag assignment(s) were incorrect, simply changing the tag(s) will cause the photo in question to instantly appear in the corrected tag groups in the Pictures Library–and without your having to change that file’s physical location!

In theory, if all the possible views you’d want to have of your photos are listed in the Picture Library’s “Arrange by:” dropdown, then you could just store all of your photos in the My Pictures folder (that’s probably a big “if,” assuming that you’re like me ;)). If you have a bit more complexity in mind than that, what you could do is choose a useful folder structure that has nothing to do with any of the “Arrange by:” display options, then use the Pictures Library to view those arrangements dynamically and virtually (what I called earlier in this thread “virtual aggregation”).

That’s a quick example of the power of Libraries–just remember that you’re working with the actual files and folders within a Library, and you’ll be fine. I would, however, recommend that your carefully re-read Fred’s original article and the posts in this thread that expand on it (as opposed to the ones that were just complaints about Libraries being either totally unnecessary or too limited to ever be useful–I don’t think those posts were either necessary or useful ;)).

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Sorry for the delay – and thanks for your fine explanation, Bethel95. It really does involve a bit of a paradigm shift – Fred had it right and I should have re-read the article before jumping to the “links” conclusion.

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For those of you who expressed that you really hated having Libraries (and possibly Favorites, too) taking up space at the top of your Explorer windows, here’s an article I found for a Windows 7 Registry hack to hide either one.

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I’m not a fan of Libraries. I understand them but haven’t found a use for them in my setup. Adding files? Yes. Adding Folders? No. I did not care for the Quick Launch for Windows Explorer opening to Libraries so, I did the old trick of changing it to open at my C: drive. Works for me.

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