Win 10 - how to sort and display parent folder in a way, and 100’s of subfolders sorted differently from parent folder?

Question

I already asked this, but maybe in a wrong forum...

I have almost a thousand folders, in Win 10, for each of my clients pictures, each folder named by the client’s name.

All these folders are under a same parent folder.

I need to have this parent folder organized alphabetically, and in list mode, so I can easily find the thousand clients by their names.

But I need that the content inside of each of these thousand folders (all jpgs pictures) to be sorted by date picture taken and in a large thumbnail view. Is there an automated way to sort this out? Maybe an script or batch file?

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

The root folder can be set to any view mode and sort order. For the sub-folders there are two parts here: view mode and sort order.

First step is to make Windows forget all remembered settings for the thousand sub-folders (actually to all folders):

• Start regedit
• Navigate to the key
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell
• Delete the subkeys Bags and BagMRU (this should be enough, but some more sub-keys are listed here)
• For good measure, delete any desktop.ini file in the sub-folders.

If all the sub-folders contain only images, then they all have the default display mode of Pictures. You may set up for one of the folders the view type (Large icons etc.), the columns to display and their size, then click the menu View > Options > View > Apply to folders. This will apply it to all the folders of type Picture.

In this way, from now on any time you open one of the sub-folders, it will have the correct view type and sort order.

The downside here is that this will become the default view of all folders that contain images. But you may change the view for any specific folder without affecting the others (as long as you don't do again Apply to folders for any folder of type Pictures).

Answer 2

There are two ways I use to do this. Disclaimer: I have numerous client folders but I do not sort like you do.

One: You can use Windows Explorer, set up a root folder, go to the View Tab, Options, Dialog windows opens, View Tab, and then Apply to Folders and OK. Do this for each root folder. Issue: You may have to redo this from time to time.

Two: xPlorer2. You can set this up, save the settings, which then causes xPlorer2 to open the same way each time. I use this application (inexpensive, trial version available) because the settings are repeatable. This helps me a great deal