Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Open Source
Folder Size solves a big Windows annoyance
by Marc Orchant Aug 22nd 2005 at 1:18PM
Y'know... with all of the similarities between Windows XP and Mac OS, it amazes me that Microsoft has never figured out that it might be helpful to be able to see the size of a folder in Windows Explorer. Sure, you can right click on the folder and get its properties but that's more clicks than I care to make and comparing the size of two folders is... well, it's annoying.Enter Folder Size, a nice bit of open source goodness that simply adds a "Folder Size" column to your Windows Explorer windows. One less annoyance.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jordan Running said 12:54PM on 8-22-2005
Wow! This is fantastic.
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Jason Clarke said 1:34PM on 8-22-2005
Good post Marc. I've been using this for so long that I forgot it wasn't built in to Windows.
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Torben Busk S?sen said 3:39PM on 8-22-2005
What a great utility. It's fast, and blends into the explorer seamlessly.
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Nicole Simon said 4:50PM on 8-22-2005
Nice one :) Could you dig out a "add folder by button" tool also please?
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Marc Orchant said 5:44PM on 8-22-2005
Nicole: I blogged about this some time ago on The Office Weblog. Here's a link ot my post about two great tools for fixing this annoyance:
http://office.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000280027420/
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tevetorbes said 7:54PM on 8-22-2005
You might check out Shell Extension City - http://www.shellcity.net/ - has a boatload of different things to download to tweak your windows shell.
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Marc Orchant said 10:00PM on 8-22-2005
Yes - Shell Extension City and its sister site Daily Rotation are excellent resources.
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Scott Villarosa said 7:41AM on 8-23-2005
I found the original on SEC about a year ago. This is a handy tweak though.
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Keith said 2:50AM on 8-24-2005
Very handy, though it sorts the values alphabetically, rather than numerically, at least on my Win2K system. (Tried emailing the author, but the mail bounced.)
I've been using Berger Laurent's Folder Size Shell Extension for many years (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_download.asp?fid=15304&fileidx=1) -- this is an excellent complement to that (will be even better if the sorting can be made to work -- hopefully it's not just me).
Thanks!
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Strunar said 8:56AM on 8-24-2005
I seems like anybody has forgot another XP funcionality: when you hover over a folder and keep cursor there, you will get a buble-box with information like "Size: XXX MB".
Of course this takes more time on complicated folders structures (like Windows :-)). Therefore on such folders you can get Size: more than 7,5 GB...
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Brian Pipa said 1:17PM on 8-26-2005
You really should be using xplorer2 instead of Windows Explorer - that functionality is built-in.
http://myvogonpoetry.com/wp/?p=39
brian
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