Friday, September 07, 2007
View Folder Size in Windows Explorer
When you’re using Windows Explorer and you want to know the size of any folder, you usually have to right-click on the folder icon and view its properties. It gets kinda exhausting after some time, so I found a way that is much easier. You can install a little software/plugin that will allow you to add a column to Windows Explorer and view all of your folders’ sizes.
Setting it up:
- First, make sure you’re running Windows 2000 or XP. Sorry, it doesn’t work in Vista, or in a 64-bit version of Windows.
- Download the installer. http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/foldersize/FolderSize-2.3.msi?download
- Run the downloaded file to start the install wizard.
- Now the Folder Size column is available to Explorer, but Explorer isn’t displaying it yet. Open an Explorer window in Details view.
- Right click on the column headers to see a list of columns you can add. Choose Folder Size.
- Now we can replace the existing Size column with the new Folder Size column. Right click on the column headers and uncheck the Size column. Drag the Folder Size column header to where Size used to be.
- Make this the default view for all folders. Go to Folder Options from the Tools menu. In the View tab, click Apply to All Folders.
Settings
Go to Windows Control Panel and find the Folder Size icon.
Now you can change setting like stopping the service from running in the background temporarily or permanently, and change the way sizes are displayed (KB or GB).
Removing
Since its always running in the background, it may slow down your computer and there were some complaints of it crashing once in a while. I have not faced any problems at all, but if you want to uninstall it: use the Add or Remove Programs from the Control Panel. You will have to manually fix the columns in Explorer by restoring the Size column and removing the Folder Size column..
1
Nice tip, thanks.
I hate the fact that using this plugin will slow Windows - but everything nice seems to slow down or crash Windows.