Changing the view in Windows Explorer in Windows 8 Skip to content Efficiency Workshop Customers Adoption Testimonials About Dr. Nitin Blog Teams Power BI Excel Word PowerPoint Outlook OneDrive OneNote Office 365 Menu Efficiency Workshop Customers Adoption Testimonials About Dr. Nitin Blog Teams Power BI Excel Word PowerPoint Outlook OneDrive OneNote Office 365 Order Now Efficiency Book by Dr Nitin Search Menu Efficiency Workshop Customers Adoption Testimonials About Dr. Nitin Blog Teams Power BI Excel Word PowerPoint Outlook OneDrive OneNote Office 365 Home » Features » Changing the view in Windows Explorer in Windows 8 Changing the view in Windows Explorer in Windows 8 March 21, 2014 Features, Microsoft 365 Changing the view in Windows Explorer (File Explorer) is a frequent task. Views are different arrangements of files like large icons, detail and so on. The keyboard shortcuts used in Windows 7 do not work in Windows 8. Here is a good set of keyboard shortcuts you should know for Windows 8. There are 8 shortcuts. Ctrl Shift 1 to 8. Let us explore this a little more… Contents Starting Windows Explorer Different Views available Changing views in Windows 7 New shortcuts in Windows 8 Large Icons Medium Icons Small Icons List Details Tiles Content Maximize the explorer window Explore the Explorer Starting Windows Explorer I hope you know that Windows key and E will open explorer. Different Views available Windows offers various views so that we can see the files in different ways. Changing views in Windows 7 Windows 7 have a View dropdown menu. The shortcuts were like Alt V D for Detail view and Alt V L for list view. ALT V X = Extra large icons ALT V R = Large icons ALT V M = Medium icons ALT V N = Small icons ALT V L = List ALT V D = Details ALT V S = Tiles ALT V T = Content These shortcuts do not work in Windows 8 as the menus have been replaced with Ribbon. New shortcuts in Windows 8 Open Windows Explorer in Windows 8, go to a folder containing lot of files and try these shortcuts. Shift Ctrl 1 to 8 and see how the views change. Extra Large Icons This view is useful for images and videos. Use this for choosing the right image when multiple similar images with minor variations exist. Other documents do not look good in this view. All you see is very big logos… Large Icons This shows more images in the available space and the detail is still visible. Medium Icons Still shows image thumbnails but no detail. Good for selecting images from a large collection. This view occupies less space per item so that you can see many more files in one view. Small Icons File names are shown in multiple columns. This view fits maximum number of files in available space. But it does not show any details about the file. The thumbnail is also not shown. It just shows the file icon. Good for quick search by name. Often the files are on the modified date. That sorting is not useful here. In fact it is confusing. Sorting on filename is useful in this view. List This view is similar to the small icons view, the only difference is that only one column is shown. I rarely use this view. Details For looking at and searching for files, this is a very nice view. This is one shortcut you should remember. Shift Ctrl 6 = Detail view. Add more columns In detail view, you can add more useful columns by right clicking on the column header and choosing the additional columns(s) required. Also notice the Size all Columns to Fit option. Very useful to auto-fit the width to avoid file names being cut off. I myself noticed this feature just now – while writing this blog Tiles A more stylish view. Like the detail view – multicolumn – but shows thumbnails. Good for pictures – also shows some additional details. Content Shows one file per row. With additional Details. Depending upon the type of file, the Content view shows additional details. For example, here is the detail view for video files. Maximize the explorer window While looking for files, maximize the explorer window so that you can see maximum number of files and maximum level of detail. Explore the Explorer We use Windows Explorer every day. But have you explored it ? Instead of me writing an article about every feature available there, why don’t you explore the explorer for few minutes – while this article is fresh in your mind? I am sure you will find many useful things. Enjoy the journey keyboard shortcut, Windows Queries | Comments | Suggestions | Wish list Cancel reply PrevPreviousHow to add background music to PowerPoint NextHow to play a video across slidesNext Subscribe to Blog Email Address Subscribe Join 1,763 other subscribers Popular articles How to customize annoying Teams Notifications Conduct meetings with two monitors Teams Live Events Dos and Don’ts Conducting Online Conferences using Teams Training Vs Adoption Who can see my OneDrive files Reduce eyestrain using Dark Mode 1100+ in-depth blog articles Adoption (21) Analytics (138) Animation (24) Audit (17) Best Practices (31) BI (44) Big Data (41) Charts (22) Collaboration (57) Consumption (26) Copy Paste (16) data cleanup (35) Data quality (22) Data Visualization (16) Demo (16) Editing (42) Efficiency (51) Excel (236) Formatting (43) Formulas (18) graphic design (31) graphics (42) Inbox (20) Knowledge Pack (18) Mail (20) Office (105) Office 365 (149) OneDrive (30) OneNote (55) Outlook (97) Pivot Tables (23) Power BI (72) Power Map (17) PowerPoint (158) Power Query (33) Power View (18) Presentation control (19) Presentations (17) security (23) SharePoint (45) Tables (26) Teams (33) Teamwork (25) Word (118) worst practices (20) Pivot Table Pro Course Yes. You use Pivot Tables everyday. Now it is time to find out the real power and nuances. 5.5 hours video, exercises, samples, Q&A. Excel to Power BI Course Learn Power BI using the concepts you already know in Excel. Fast transition, in-depth coverage and immediately usable. Privacy Policy Contact Us Menu Privacy Policy Contact Us Linkedin Twitter Youtube 0 Efficiency Best Practices by Dr Nitin Order Now Released! Efficiency book by Dr Nitin Paranjape 0 Efficiency Best Practices Order Now