1. Use the Preview Pane to preview supported file formats. The preview pane lets you see the content of the file without having to double click or open the file. To activate the feature, click the Organize button then under the Layout menu select to check the Preview Pane.
2. Explore zipped contents even without unzipping. Windows 7 can navigate the contents of compressed archives, such as zipped files, without a third-party utility.
3. If you want to see the exact folder path you’re in instead of the location, click on a blank area in the Address bar. The information in the Address bar changes to the exact path.
Before clicking the address bar:
After clicking the address bar:
4. Use the search box to quickly find your file. The searching capability of windows 7 is very fast if you have indexed your files. Just type the search keyword and the search results appear in a matter of few seconds. The yellow highlights the word that matches inside the filename.
Most of Windows users that I met is not utilizing the indexing service by searching this way – instead they still manually traverse all folders they suspect contains the file that they need.
5. Know where your program data is stored. In Windows XP you might have been used to saving the program data of games and applications under your profile name at the “documents and settings” folder. In Windows 7 the “ProgramData” folder is the new location – it is in the root folder of your system partition (usually the C drive).
It is hidden by default so you will need to unhide it. To unhide a folder just go to the Control Panel then select Folder Options. Under the view tab check “Hidden files and folders: Show all files and folders”. click apply then OK to save the changes. After that you should see the hidden ProgramData folder and other hidden folders.
Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done!
You can make the preview pane show something for every type of file by adding this key to the registry:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellex{8895b1c6-b41f-4c1c-a562-0d564250836f}]
@="{1531d583-8375-4d3f-b5fb-d23bbd169f22}"
This basically says for all files that don't already have a registered preview handler, use the text preview. This has the effect of showing the raw bytes of most files on the system. This will be confusing to many, but extremely useful to some. Now I wish there was a hex preview handler!