In Windows Explorer's View\Choose Details dialog, there are numerous
additional viewable folder property fields available for use beyond the usual
"name, size, type, date modified". You can check their boxes as desired, to
get different or additional columns when you View Details on a folder.

Just wondering if there's a way to rename some of these additional column
names to something more useful, such as, renaming "Owner" to "First" and
renaming Category to "State" and renaming Attributes to "Phone".

Because then you can create a new empty notepad file for each employee in
your company, using their last names for the file names. Then, store the
first name, state, and phone number in those additional file properties for
each file. You end up with a "Company Phone Directory" folder which, when
openend by anyone on the network, displays your entire corporate phone
directory. The advantage is that everyone in the company can open that
folder simultaneously and click on any column to sort the whole directory by
last, first, phone, state, etc. whatever way each individual person wants,
without affecting anyone else's preferred view/sort order.

Why make everyone launch a complete program like Excel or Word, consuming a
lot of precious RAM on innumerable desktop PCs, just to access a file that
can only be edited by one person at a time, when instead you can instantly
and constantly publish the whole phone directory using nothing more than
Windows Explorer itself, letting everyone have simultaneous full access to
all the data, displayed any way each individual wants, with one click?

Being able to rename the columns for that folder would, of course, be a nice
touch. Nevertheless, you can still use this idea; just ignore the
Windows-standard column titles. The end result is being able to sort the
whole 'phone directory' with one click on any column header by last name,
first name, state, phone number, etc for for lightning fast lookups. This
same concept works for any kind of workgroup-shared 'list'.

Only minor hassle: rolling it out to the workgroup, each person has to know
how to go into that folder and check the appropriate additional file property
check boxes on their own computer, to get the 'phone directory' columns to
display on their PC...the column setups are stored in their own user settings
somewhere, not in the 'phone directory' folder itself. But that's not a big
show-stopper.

Posted FWIW in case it helps somebody...

"JustSomeGuy" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news81D181B-21E5-4F08-8ACF-(E-Mail Removed)...
> In Windows Explorer's View\Choose Details dialog, there are numerous
> additional viewable folder property fields available for use beyond the
> usual
> "name, size, type, date modified". You can check their boxes as desired,
> to
> get different or additional columns when you View Details on a folder.
>
> Just wondering if there's a way to rename some of these additional column
> names to something more useful, such as, renaming "Owner" to "First" and
> renaming Category to "State" and renaming Attributes to "Phone".
>

No. The ListView header labels are not customizable that way.

> Because then you can create a new empty notepad file for each employee in
> your company, using their last names for the file names. Then, store the
> first name, state, and phone number in those additional file properties
> for
> each file. You end up with a "Company Phone Directory" folder which, when
> openend by anyone on the network, displays your entire corporate phone
> directory. The advantage is that everyone in the company can open that
> folder simultaneously and click on any column to sort the whole directory
> by
> last, first, phone, state, etc. whatever way each individual person wants,
> without affecting anyone else's preferred view/sort order.
>
> Why make everyone launch a complete program like Excel or Word, consuming
> a
> lot of precious RAM on innumerable desktop PCs, just to access a file that
> can only be edited by one person at a time, when instead you can instantly
> and constantly publish the whole phone directory using nothing more than
> Windows Explorer itself, letting everyone have simultaneous full access
> to
> all the data, displayed any way each individual wants, with one click?
>

If you share a file on a drive. Everyone can open are read the file at that
same time. They are looking at a instance of the file so there should be no
depreciable loss of anything (RAM, Resources, bandwidth, etc.) other than
normal desktop activity. Also, the likelyhood of everyone opening the file
at the same time is remote.

> Being able to rename the columns for that folder would, of course, be a
> nice
> touch. Nevertheless, you can still use this idea; just ignore the
> Windows-standard column titles. The end result is being able to sort the
> whole 'phone directory' with one click on any column header by last name,
> first name, state, phone number, etc for for lightning fast lookups. This
> same concept works for any kind of workgroup-shared 'list'.
>
> Only minor hassle: rolling it out to the workgroup, each person has to
> know
> how to go into that folder and check the appropriate additional file
> property
> check boxes on their own computer, to get the 'phone directory' columns to
> display on their PC...the column setups are stored in their own user
> settings
> somewhere, not in the 'phone directory' folder itself. But that's not a
> big
> show-stopper.
>
> Posted FWIW in case it helps somebody...

BTW: Do you use MS Office? If so, you can download a Address Book database
for Microsoft Access for free.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/te...book&av=TPL000

All you have to do is enter the info and drop the .mdb file in a shared
folder.

Mark

Good to know. But this missess the whole point; the original idea requires
nobody to install and learn how to use Access, or any other program, to get
the same lookup/sort functionality.

> BTW: Do you use MS Office? If so, you can download a Address Book database
> for Microsoft Access for free.
> http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/te...book&av=TPL000
>
> All you have to do is enter the info and drop the .mdb file in a shared
> folder.
>
> Mark
>
>
>

"Bob W" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:64A2C288-87BB-46A3-8196-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Good to know. But this missess the whole point;

I understood the point, and I also stated that what JustSomeGuy wants to do
cannot be done, so I offered an alternative.

> the original idea requires nobody to install and learn how to use Access,
> or any other program, to get
> the same lookup/sort functionality.
>

I disagree mainly because the work is already done for you. The database,
the forms, report views, everything! All you have to do is enter the
information in it. Creating an Access database has a considerable learning
curve, using one does not.

Such applications are more professional and less prone to problems. Not to
mention the flexibility. Using text files for business workplace information
is an archaic, and rather poor method of storing information such as
employee. If you have spent the (large amount of) money on software such as
Office, why not use it?

IMO
Mark