MS Windows: Customize "Save as" and "Open" dialogues??

brentman

Senior member
Dec 4, 2002
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Does anyone know if there is a way to edit or customize the "open" and "Save as" dialogues in Windows XP? The sidebar has shortcuts to fairly useless places and I want to edit them.

I searched through the registry and on the MS Support site. Also a bit on google, to no avail. Any info would be great. TIA
 

Lord Evermore

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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Download TweakUI. The "common dialogs" selection lets you customize it. You probably can't find it in the Registry because Microsoft "hides" things like that by using odd characters in the words, or uses ID codes to refer to certain things like the Desktop.
 

NogginBoink

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
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Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Download TweakUI. The "common dialogs" selection lets you customize it. You probably can't find it in the Registry because Microsoft "hides" things like that by using odd characters in the words, or uses ID codes to refer to certain things like the Desktop.

Microsoft does not "hide" things in the registry.

Most of the time, when I need to find a setting that I suspect is stored in the registry, I can navigate straight to it based on good guessing and an understanding of the system.

Those "ID Codes" you're talking about may by GUIDs ( like "{0021400-0000-0000-c000-00000000000046}") and are a lot more complex (and have a lot more reason for being) than just ID Codes. You can search MSDN to find out what a GUID is.
 

propellerhead

Golden Member
Apr 25, 2001
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Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Download TweakUI. The "common dialogs" selection lets you customize it. You probably can't find it in the Registry because Microsoft "hides" things like that by using odd characters in the words, or uses ID codes to refer to certain things like the Desktop.

Thanks! I saw that there once but never paid much attention to it.
 

Lord Evermore

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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I was referring to CLSIDs in the Registry. As far as a user trying to navigate the registry is concerned, they're garbage that do nothing but conceal locations of things Microsoft doesn't want you to change. Aside from that, the "hiding" I referred to was things like the phrase "My Computer" or other things with a space or other character in them. Quite often, but not always, the Registry entries use another code character to represent the space. The weird thing is that if the phrase has multiple words, the coded space may only appear in one place, while the rest of it will have a normal space. so if you're looking for "My Saved Pictures", you may not find it, but you might find "My&Saved Pictures" or My&Saved&Pictures", or the spaces may just be removed altogether, and you have to figure out what that coded character actually is. Then all you end up finding is a CLSID which appears in 20 other places with hardly any indication which one will affect the option you want to change.

One specific thing it took me forever to locate a few weeks ago was the option that made Windows make "Copy to Audio CD" a context menu option for all MP3 files, even though Windows Media Player wasn't the handler of those files, and I'd disabled all Windows CD burning functions. It wasn't referenced in any of the MP3 related file type information, or any of the other files types that showed that option. I finally found it deep in some odd spot, named something like MakeCDCopy, but I don't think it was even that intuitive. I consider that "hiding" the option, when there's no way in the UI to change it, and no easy way to change it manually without having intimate knowledge of the layout of the registry and the way the programmers and marketers think.
 

MasterSamwise

Senior member
Jan 12, 2003
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I finally found it deep in some odd spot, named something like MakeCDCopy, but I don't think it was even that intuitive. I consider that "hiding" the option, when there's no way in the UI to change it, and no easy way to change it manually without having intimate knowledge of the layout of the registry and the way the programmers and marketers think.

Programmers.. even windows programmers, don't think like the normal... or even... advanced computer user.
 

Lord Evermore

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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I tend to think it's more marketers and management deciding things like that need to be done, because of the whole "Windows eXPerience" that they don't want you to be able to mess up and change, combined with the age of the code that they're just modifying year after year.