annotate windows folders

Question

Is there a way to annotate folders, with the annotations showing up in windows explorer?

Ideally, the annotations should be visible as tooltip and in the properties dialog.

Installing additional software at the clients would not be a problem, btu it should work for folders on the network, too. Server is W2K3, Clients are XP and W7.

Answer 1

It sounds like you're looking for what is called an "InfoTip". An example of this is shown below:

You can add an InfoTip to a folder by adding an InfoTip entry to the .ShellClassInfo section of the desktop.ini contained in the folder.

An example of the contents of such a file:

[.ShellClassInfo]
InfoTip=Some sensible information.

Note, the folder needs to be marked as a system folder for the text to be shown. This can be accomplished by running the following command:

attrib +s <folder_name>

For further information, and more help in doing it, see the following:

• Customizing Folders with Desktop.ini
• Adding Tooltips/Info tips to any folder