The community Taskforce initiative has now come to a close.
Thanks to everyone who made thoughtful and genuine contributions to the website.
All submissions will be kept publically available for the forseeable future for reference purposes.

This website is part of the community Taskforce initiative

Submission details

promote
65 +66/-1 votes
demote
change vote

Documents library cannot remember view settings

Submitted by rm20010 on November 10, 2008 to Annoyance, Bug, Usability

If Vista had a problem remembering folder views, then this is worse.

Any folder view settings you apply while browsing your Documents library aren't entirely preserved once you navigate out of that folder.

Here's an example. Open up the Documents library. Group it by type. Then navigate to some other folder, and navigate back. Or just close the window and reopen it from the Start Menu. The view is back to just plain sorted by type.

This actually happens to any folder and subfolders that are included in libraries, not necessarily root level folders.

In addition, when grouping by type the files are in random order, not alphabetical. You'll have to also click on the 'Name' header to get them sorted alphabetically.

Fortunately this annoying behaviour doesn't show up when browsing non-library folders.

Medium

Medium

Not fixed

Discussion (4 comments)

rm20010 wrote on November 10, 2008, 3:19am

Changed problem description.

JonathanJ wrote on November 10, 2008, 4:30am

I was just about to post this. Major annoyance.

+1 and I vote you upgrade this to Severity: High and Impact: High.

JonathanJ wrote on November 10, 2008, 6:23am

I just realized this behavior does extend into regular Explorer folders. Looks like Microsoft has done less work than I thought...

BrandonLive wrote on December 30, 2008, 9:58am

JonathanJ - this should only affect Libraries and the By Folder view, not regular folder views.

We appreciate this feedback, really. This is why we have betas after all.

xpclient wrote on August 31, 2010, 11:17am

Also, why the Library view forced upon all its containing folders. If you open any folder inside a library directly from the Run command line or regular folders, the folder view is saved but when navigating through the library, the same view as that of the library is forced. Every single folder irrespective of how or from where it is opened should show its custom view if the view is customized by the user. This issue is also mentioned in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_7 : "When navigating to a folder from a library, it is not possible to view the folder's contents in the view the user has set or customized. The folder uses the library's view." Remains unchanged for RTM.

Comment edited on August 31, 2010, 11:18am

Comment edited on August 31, 2010, 11:18am

Comment edited on August 31, 2010, 11:18am

You might also be interested in...