How to Open Folder Options in Windows – 10 Ways

Folders are one of the most important elements of the computer’s file system, designed to organize and store information in operating systems of the Windows family. The software or the users themselves combine groups of files into folders according to some criteria.

The system provides options to control folder functions using the folder options in Windows. Folder Options are used to customize the appearance, properties, and functionality of folders in Windows Explorer.

Some of the folders are created by the operating system itself, others by application programs installed on the computer, and the rest by the user himself for convenient data storage and distribution of files on disks in the OS. Some of the folders are created automatically by the system or programs, others are created by the user for their own needs.

A folder is a container for storing files. In one folder, in addition to files, there may be several other folders. In this case, this folder is called the parent (enclosing) folder, and the folders inside are called subfolders. Proper organization of folders helps to conveniently distribute data on the computer, quickly access the files you need.

Many users need to change some settings in the operating system in order to change the folder options to suit their needs or enable certain options regarding folders and files. Folder options in the Windows 10 operating system are often needed in order to, for example, display hidden files, folders and drives, or enable the display of extensions for registered file types.

Before performing these steps, the user has a natural question about where the folder settings are located in the Windows system, because you first need to find the folder settings on the computer in order to then make the necessary changes in the settings.

This article contains instructions on how to access folder options in different ways, tells where folder options are located in Windows 10.

How to open folder options in Windows 10 – 1 way

In this guide, I show how to enter the folder options settings using Windows 10 as an example. Most of the methods in this article can be used on other operating systems: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1.

Go through the steps:

1. Press the “Win” + “R” keys.
2. The “Run” dialog box will open, in which you need to enter the command: “control.exe folders” or “control folders” (enter without quotes).
3. Click on the “OK” button.
4. The “Explorer Options” window will open, in which click the “View” tab.
5. In particular, in the “Advanced options:” section there are quite a few options for changing folder and file settings.

How to open folder options – method 2

Now we will execute another command to access the folder options in Windows in a similar way.

When using this method, you will need to do the following:

1. Press the keyboard keys “Win” + “R”.
2. In the “Run” window, enter the command, and then press the “Enter” key:

rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Options_RunDLL 0

3. As a result of executing this command, the “Explorer Options” window will open, from which you can access the desired settings located in the tabs of this dialog box.

Folder options in Windows 10: how to enter – method 3

There are several ways to enter folder and file settings directly from the built-in file manager – Windows Explorer.

Do the following:

1. Open an Explorer window.
2. Click on the “File” menu.
3. In the drop-down menu, click on “Settings”.
4. This will open the File Explorer Options window, from which you can configure folder, file, and search options.

Opening Folder Options from Windows Explorer – Method 4

With another method using Windows Explorer, we will use two similar methods to solve our problem.

1 option:

1. Open the View tab in the Explorer window.
2. Click on the “Options” button.
3. The File Explorer Options window will open on your computer.

Option 2:

1. In Explorer, go to the “View” tab.
2. Click the arrow at the bottom of the Options button.
3. A menu will open in which you need to click on “Change folder and search options.”
4. The “Explorer Options” window will appear on the desktop.

Log in from Explorer using the keyboard – 5 way

On Windows, there is an interesting method used to open Folder Preferences from Explorer using the keyboard.

Follow these steps:

1. Press the “Win” + “E” keys.
2. If, at this point in time, the keyboard layout is in English, press the “Shift” + “Alt” keys to switch to Russian. If the keyboard is currently in Russian, skip this step.
3. Press the “Alt” key.
4. Letters will appear next to the File menu.
5. Press the “F” key in the Russian keyboard layout.
6. In the File menu of Explorer, the item “Change folder and search options” will appear.
7. Press the “I” key.
8. The Folder Options window will open on your desktop.

How to Find Folder Options in Windows – Method 6

Now let’s try another way to navigate to the necessary settings from File Explorer in Windows.

You will need to do the following:

1. In any open Windows Explorer window, left-click on an empty space in the address bar.
2. Type “control folders” (without the quotes) and then press the “Enter” key.

How to enter folder options from the command line – method 7

To get into the folder options, you can use the system tool – the Windows command line.

In the window of this system tool, you will need to perform the following actions:

1. Launch Command Prompt on your computer.
2. In the command line interpreter window, enter the command: “control folders” (without quotes).
3. Press the “Enter” key.

Navigating to folder options from the Settings app – Method 8

To access the necessary options, you can use the system application “Settings” from the Windows 10 operating system.

Perform the following procedure:

1. Right-click on the Start menu, in the context menu, click on Settings.
2. In the Settings app window, in the search box, type “explorer”.
3. “Explorer Options” will appear among the results.
4. Click on this hint.

Login to Control Panel – Method 9

Another way is using another system tool – the Control Panel application.

Go through the following steps:

1. Launch Windows 10 Control Panel.
2. In the “Computer Settings” window, set the view type to “Small Icons”.
3. Click on the “Explorer Options” option.

Using the properties of a separate folder – 10 way

There is an option in which the user gets access to the settings of a particular folder. These settings do not apply to the global settings of all folders in the operating system. So you can change some settings only for a specific folder.

To access individual folder options, follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the required folder.
2. In the context menu that opens, select “Properties”.
3. In the properties window of the folder, the settings related specifically to this folder will become available.

Article Conclusions

To make the necessary settings, users need to access the folder and file options in the Windows operating system. You can enter folder options by running commands from the Run window, from the command line, directly from the Explorer window, from the Options or Control Panel applications. You can use the options available in the properties of an individual folder to configure settings for that folder only.