xplorer² Tips

This is just a collections of various customizations for xplorer²
User Commands

User commands can be used for various type of commands, I'm using them as an alternative to shell extensions on the context menu.
I have the following commands:

PowerShell for current location
>%systemroot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -NoExit -Command cd $P
This opens a PowerShell window and sets the current location to the one currently open in the active xplorer² window.
Create ISO of folder
>%bindir%\tools\DiscUtils\ISOCreate.exe  C:\folder_$B.iso $F
This takes the currently selected folder ($F) and creates an ISO image using the name of the folder ($B). DiskUtils can be downloaded from CodePlex
Unzip File
>%bindir%\unzip.exe $N -d E:\news\$B
Extracts all files in the selected zip archive ($N) to a folder the the same name as the archive ($B) in a certain location.
Why would you need this? It's already build into the Windows Explorer Shell, but hey Server Core has no such shell.
Settings
New File Extension

When you press F7 to create a new file, the new file name is 'New File.txt', in more cases than not I don't want a txt file but cmd or ps1 or whatever.

There is a setting for this, because I'm using the file based settings I just open 'x2settings.ini'. In the [xplorer2_UC] section change 'szNewFileExt=txt' to 'szNewFileExt=.' Now you don't get any extension and can choose one yourself.

The same setting also exists in the registry and in advanced settings

Overlay icons don't work on files on network drive.

In options untick 'Faster network access with plain icons etc'

Use Windows Photo Viewer via F3

I do like the Windows Photo Viewer, in Windows 10 it takes some effort to get this to work as the default image viewer.
I have set it up that if I select an image file and press F3, the Windows Photo viewer starts up.
This involved two steps, first we need to have a way to run the viewer itself which is a DLL rather than a exe, I use this batch file" 

SET string=%1
SET fileName=%string:"=%
start %SystemRoot%\System32\rundll32.exe "%ProgramFiles%\Windows Photo Viewer\PhotoViewer.dll", ImageView_Fullscreen %fileName%
We need the string replacement because, the command doesn't work when using quotes.
We store this as a file like: C:\scripts\ViewImage.cmd
then in xplorer² we have to tell it to use this whenever we press F3, in the UI it only allows us to select EXEs, so we have to set the value in the registry 
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\ZabaraKatranemia Plc\xplorer2_UC\szExternalViewer = C:\scripts\ViewImage.cmd

Keyboard shortcuts I changed
I am not really using CD Burning but I did change the special folder to a location I often use.
More than 20 favourites
You can add bookmarks to frequently used file locations, but there is a limit of how many you can add to the toolbars.
For a while I used a script, to change the configuration files/registry but that turned out to be tiresome.
I am now using the following approach. Create an empty directory somewhere on your harddrive, optionally point one of the bookmarks to it.

Now use the Windows shortcuts feature to add links to an unlimited number of directories. You may want to change the names of the shortcuts to describe the directory better.

If you add the bookmark to a toolbar, you have a quick access to all your favourites.
This is the first step and it's okay to stop here, if that is good enough for you.

I like as few clicks as possible to get to my favourite file system locations, so I do a little more
From the view menu, select the Mini scrap item to display the mini scrap panel. You can move it around to the top or bottom, but I prefer it on the left (I don't use the tree).
Open the folder with your shortcuts, now left-mouse-drag the lnk files from the folder onto the mini scrap. They show up there and you can just double-click on an item to open the location in the active pane.

By default, the mini scrap shows items with a Pane Style of List, which is okay.
You can right click in the mini scrap and change the style.
In the same menu you can save the content of the scrap into a cida file and this way you can have multiple collections of bookmarks

The last thing I like to do is group my bookmarks.
In the mini scrap using the context menu, first change the style to details. Then in the same menu, open Arrange by and then Custom groups
In the dialog, click the Add icon (furthest left), the Group Name is the heading for the group, in the Named field add a comma separated list of file names you want to be included, you could use wildcards.
Add additional groups to group your bookmarks.
In the 'Custom categorizer' dialog you can order the categories, the way you want them to appear in the mini scrap.
You can right-click on the column header to remove the other columns, as you don't need them.
Save the cida file after you changed things.
While in the mini-scrap, open the 'Customize' menu and select 'Custom groups' there select 'Add current' and give it a name. This saves your grouping definitions.
After you changed you grouping definitions you need to use 'Add current' again to save the new definitions under a new name, and delete the old one, that's not perfect.
You can collapse/expand the groups.
If some items appear in a group you didn't expect them in, make sure the more specific names are in earlier groups.

Pages in this section