Improving our file management basics: copy, move, rename, and delete

Article
08/23/2011

We wanted to do an early Windows 8 post about one of the most used features, and one we have not improved substantially in a long time. With the increasing amount of local storage measured in terabytes, containing photos (in multiple formats and very large files), music, and video, these common operations are being taxed in new ways. These changes, along with consistent feedback about what we could improve, have inspired us to take a fresh look and redesign these operations. Of course this is just one feature among many, but we wanted to start with something we can all relate to. Alex Simons is a director of program management on our Windows engineering team and authored this post on the redesign of some Windows file management basics. (PS: A lot of folks asked about Building Windows 8 Video #1 -- this is the user experience demo, https://win8.ms/uxpreview1. The numbering seems to be confusing so this will be our last numbered video.)--Steven

Copying, moving, renaming, and deleting are far and away the most heavily used features within Windows Explorer, representing 50% of total command usage (based on Windows 7 telemetry data). For Windows 8, we want to make sure that using these core file management commands, which we collectively refer to as “copy jobs,” is a great experience.

We know from telemetry data (which is based on hundreds of millions of individuals opting in to provide anonymous data about product usage), that although 50% of these jobs take less than 10 seconds to complete, many people are also doing much larger jobs, 20% of which take more than 2 minutes to complete. Prior versions of Windows Explorer can handle these kinds of jobs, but Explorer isn’t optimized for high-volume jobs or for executing multiple copy jobs concurrently.

Usability studies confirm what most of us know—there are some pretty cluttered and confusing parts of the Windows 7 copy experience. This is particularly true when people need to deal with files and folders that have the same file names, in what we call file name collisions. Lastly, our telemetry shows that 5.61% of copy jobs fail to complete for a variety of different reasons ranging from network interruptions to people just canceling the operation.

We clearly have an opportunity to make some improvements in the experience of high-volume copying, in dealing with file name collisions, and in assuring the successful completion of copy jobs.

Many of you reading this blog post come at this from a slightly different perspective. Like me, you might already have a third-party copy management tool that already addresses these high-volume scenarios. Our telemetry data shows that the most popular of these add-ons (such as TeraCopy, FastCopy, and Copy Handler) are running on fewer than .45% of Windows 7 PCs. While that might be a large absolute number given the size of the Windows 7 customer base, it still tells us that most people do not have a great tool for high-volume copy jobs.

We aren’t aiming to match the feature sets of these add-ons. We expect that there will be a vibrant market for third-party add-ons for a long time. Our focus is on improving the experience of the person who is doing high-volume copying with Explorer today, who would like more control, more insight into what’s going on while copying, and a cleaner, more streamlined experience.

In Windows 8, we have three main goals for our improvements to the copy experience:

One place to manage all copy jobs: Create one unified experience for managing and monitoring ongoing copy operations.
Clear and concise: Remove distractions and give people the key information they need.
User in control: Put people in control of their copy operations.

Based on these goals, we made four major improvements to the copy experience. Here is a short video demo of these improvements—but keep reading for a more detailed tour.

This HTML5 video isn't supported in your browser.

If you don't see a video here or can't play it, download it here: High quality MP4 | Low quality MP4

First, we’ve consolidated the copy experience. You can now review and control all the Explorer copy jobs currently executing in one combined UI. Windows 8 presents all pending copy jobs in this single dialog, saving you from having to navigate through multiple floating dialogs looking for the one you need.

Next, we’ve added the ability to pause, resume, and stop each copy operation currently underway. This gives you control over which copy jobs will complete first. You can also click any of the source or destination folders while the copy operation is taking place and open up those folders.

To support this new ability to prioritize and decide, we’ve added a detailed view with a real-time throughput graph. Now each copy job shows the speed of data transfer, the transfer rate trend, and how much data in left to transfer. While this is not designed for benchmarking, in many cases it can provide a quick and easy way to assess what is going on for a particular job.

Here you can see three copy jobs underway:

And here you can see how the speed of file transfer increases substantially when two of the copy jobs are paused:

We’re anticipating that many of you are going to want to know what we’ve done to improve the accuracy of the estimated time remaining for a copy to complete. (This has been the source of some pretty funny jokes over the years).

Estimating the time remaining to complete a copy is nearly impossible to do with any precision because there are many unpredictable and uncontrollable variables involved – for instance, how much network bandwidth will be available for the length of the copy job? Will your anti-virus software spin up and start scanning files? Will another application need to access the hard drive? Will the user start another copy job?

Rather than invest a lot of time coming up with a low confidence estimate that would be only slightly improved over the current one, we focused on presenting the information we were confident about in a useful and compelling way. This makes the most reliable information we have available to you so you can make more informed decisions.

Our last major set of improvements simplify and clean up the experience for resolving file name collisions, which we also refer to as “conflict resolution.” At this point we can admit that the current experience can be rather confusing. People don’t know which files are which, and they find it challenging to find the information they need to make a decision.

Windows 7 Conflict Resolution dialog

Our new design is much more clear, concise, and efficient, providing a much more visible and actionable approach to conflict resolution. All the files from the source are on the left. All the files in the target location with file name collisions are on the right. The screen layout is easy to understand and shows you the critical information for all the collisions, front and center in one dialog.

The new Windows 8 Conflict Resolution dialog

If you need to know even more about the conflicting files, you can hover over the thumbnail image to see the file path or double-click it to open it from here.

Finally, in addition to these big improvements, we’ve also done a thorough scrub and removed many of the confirmation dialogs that you’ve told us are annoying or feel redundant (i.e. “are you sure you want to move this file to the recycle bin?” or “are you sure you want to merge these folders?”) to create a quieter, less distracting experience.

All of this adds up to building a significantly improved copy experience, one that is unified, concise, and clear, and which puts you in control of your experience.

--Alex Simons

Comments

Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Any Windows user knows that it's the small changes that make a big difference! THANK YOU!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Wow! Looks cool. Keep up the good work.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
The explorer UI in graph view has a very flat chrome. Look way better than the legacy Vista chrome.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
What about that problem where you're copying hundreds of files and there's a problem somewhere and instead of telling you the problem and what you can do to fix it, the whole thing just stops, and you have to manually find the problem, sort it out, and then start the whole copy procedure again. That would be good to be fixed also.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
The yellow "pause" color looks like a slow transfer more than a paused transfer
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
These new dialogs look good, I am looking forward to a better experience with file operations :)
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
The 'Choose Files' dialog is a UX disaster...
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
@x9 -- can you be more constructive or specific?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Please Please display all the copy 'error dialogs' after the copying has completed .So I don't have to sit infront of the machine all the time.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I loooove the centered title bar text.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I really like the new copy dialogs including the detailed transfer speed information etc. Keep up the good work and the innovative enhancements.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Kinda agree with x9... The dialgoue has no indication why it is being presented (unlike the Win 7 version which tells you there is a file with the same name.. nicely put..simple and easy to grasp). "The copied file will have a number added to its name"... SERIOUSLY?!! Thats a disaster of a warning. Just ask a non power user (ask a non geeky wife, kid etc what sense it makes to them) ... Make the UX guys work harder on that dialgoue.. I prefer the current dialogue.. and I am trying hard to think in terms of KISS not as a geek.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
It is getting a new level, it's awesome the new Windows 8 and every change too! I Hope to have beta for users soon!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
@gawicks Please Please display all the copy 'error dialogs' after the copying has completed .So I don't have to sit infront of the machine all the time.Yes! I second this! This would be much nicer to have than the moving throughput charts.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I think every time I have a file name conflict I always want to replace the existing files with the new one. The default UX seems to suggest that replacing and keeping the existing files are equally common tasks. I'm curious if my usage pattern is consistent with the telemetry data.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
To add to my previous comment.. I cared enough to ask a couple of folks in the room who are not geeks but use Win 7 almost daily.. a fair bit.They did not understand what "a number added to its name" would do and what it exactly meant. Also, had it not been for pictures (so it was word docs or other file types) they would have no clue that the dialgoue is presented because of a name conflict. In their words "i guessed it was files with the same name because the thumbnails loooked the same"
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Please make copying LARGE files into and out of zip archives reliable -- it doesn't even have to be fast, I just want the MD5 hashes of the large files going into the zip be the same as when I later extract them. On Windows 7 I have to use a third-party zip tool to make it work right.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
What about gray instead of yellow for the paused copy charts?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
yellow is confusing. it should be grey when its paused to show its not active. yellow is more like yellow, orange, green - the colors indicating the health/speed of something
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
this is nice, i wish i could get rid of full row select. it's really annoying trying to drag files to a folder, when only sub folders are visible, and trying to find white space to drop the files i'm copying so they don't end up in one of the sub folders.can't tell you how many times this happens, then i have to open folders or search to find where they went.i have a nice powerpoint presentation, if you're interested.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Also have to say i agree with @x9. Maybe instead of clicking those checkboxes, for each conflict you can just choose the file you want to keep. The checkboxes are cluttering the interface and need precision when clicking them - so if you have 20 conflicting files you would spend a while clicking them...
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
How about some more smarts in the conflict resolver?No need to display a thumbnail if:1) the files have the same name and2) they have the same size and3) their checksums match (or you could do a byte-by-byte comparison)My time is more valuable than my computer's - let it do some crunching beforehand to avoid asking me to decide something obvious.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Very nice! Those are some improvements that many Windows users will be able to benefit from right away.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I thought there were some flaws in the dialog. The colors seem wrong in my opinion - a pause should be more of a red (think stop lights). Here's a (very quick!) mockup I made that shows some of the changes that should be made.http://yfrog.com/gz7v0qp
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
@schneideri agree, when watching the video without sound i thought that yellow was saying it was going slowof course you would quickly learn this is not the case but to me gray would be a better colour
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
This is great! I do a lot with USBs and stuff, so I'm going to love this.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Please friendly toTouch friendly = easy to operate on Touch Device. Clowd friendly = async on slow network. Mobile friendly = pause/resume on wi-fi / 3G network. Big friendly = easy to use over 10,000 files, over 100GB files.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Great stuff!How about you fix this first: answers.microsoft.com/.../50a81b05-da98-4d55-821d-55ffbbd0e998
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Keep up the good work :)
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I like it!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Can you please make the choose files more detailed?Also instead of the checkboxes can't you just select the image instead just like opening a image base link on HTML?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Hmm... My comment didn't seem to get through.Anyways, I agree that paused operations should be red. Think of it like a traffic light, where green is go, yellow means to only continue if you are in the intersection and red is stop.Also, what about a "mass apply" option for conflict resolution? There is no way to say "Replace with {newer, older, smaller, larger}" files. Also, what if there are hundreds of conflicts which need resolution? That will be a huge pain in the rear-end.What about ZIP support? While there are options such as WinZip and 7-zip that is still no excuse for Windows Explorer's implementation to be horribly slow. If Explorer is going to support ZIP's natively it should be able to do it quickly. Extracting ZIP's with the built-in extractor is just plain slow.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
You should be able to click on the image thumb and/or file icon instead of the checkbox in order to select it. Is this currently how things are? It wasn't shown in the video.Or what about ditching the checkboxes and just have an outline or background colour applied to the selected copy?Looks like a great improvement from W7. Good work!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Your blog hasn't addressed some users concerns regarding copying files to USB sticks with multiple copies in progress at once. Currently (Win7) if you copy say three files to a USB stick the transfer will run at nearly the USB sticks max write speed - or there about. Each file is copied one after the other.However, if you copy the same three files at the same time (using three different copy dialogues, starting one copy directly after the first and so on) the total transfer speed is no where near the same -- So coping the same three files takes way longer. Windows should handle this situation. Devices that cannot handle multiple concurrent writes should have their copies put into a que rather than attempting all concurrently.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
File copying mech. is simply borrowed from linux.... :-V
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Great job! It looks fantastic!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Nice! now implement queue :).. Same as in totalcmd ;)
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Finally! I hope it covers gracefully the case where the target filename is too long. Ideally it would cover this by allowing arbitrarily long filenames.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
The orb is gone! (at least at the start it was)
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
The orb is gone! (at least at the start it was)
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Will be easy to copy multiple movies to my laptop :) Well..but I doubt it will make the system slow down tremendously.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I am a long time TeraCopy user as the various versions of Windows have never been able to provide a reliable experience for transferring large files over a network, even a fast local network. It is great to see you are addressing some of the shortcomings and I hope it includes the following:Automatic retry (resume) mechanismCopy operations are paused by default when another copy operation to that volume is already in progress (your own tests show that this will improve throughput). I agree with some of the other comments about the new conflict resolution UI. My first impression is that it is not clear at all. I wouldn't wish that screen on a non power user.Keep up the good work though.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
You know when you start a big copy job and realize that you are doing it over the wireless. So you grab a network cable and plug it in.Does the file copy know to utilize the faster connection now? Perhaps after you pause the copy and then resume it?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Will it be possible to pause the copy operation and resume it after reboot/sleep/hibernate? The scenario is following - sometimes I have to copy many/big files, but have no time to wait for completion. I want to be able to shutdown the PC and it will resume the copy after restart. Will be also great to have an option to shutdown the PC after copy operation completes.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
None of the interfaces shown seem suitable for touch use. What about that?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I remember the time thing when it comes to copy, i observed the differences in all releases since windows 98 it has been improving and this one seems more compelling to me, Good Work. looks like Windows Team is working very hard to kick all.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Please install and try supercopier first (supercopier.sfxteam.org) then make their features basic stuff in Windows 8. Then you could talk about copy management.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Yes, remove the orb please - it is dated, just the flag is right! Remember the correct use of padding or margin on these things, the flag as the same size it is now without the orb is best - I noticed the repositioning of the 'More Details' text to be vertically aligned and have better left margin form the sprite - seems someone is thinking about the details. I agree that errors should be dealt with at the end of a file copy especially on large jobs, I hate coming back to my desk an hour later to find it has stopped at 30% for the sake of a file.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I'd like to echo Jawkins' comment. "Keep both and rename" needs to stay. I organize pictures by folder and don't really care about file names. So, having (1), (2)... appended to the file name is no problem. In fact, it's preferred because it allows me to copy files more quickly.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Along with double clicking the thumbnail to preview the file, I suggest that hovering over a thumbnail on the 'Conflict Resolution Dialog' will also give you a larger view of the image.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
FINALLY focus on some KEY areas here that have in my opinion been ignored for way too long. Pat pat.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASEBring back the .GIF animation support in picture viewer of Windows
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
What about merging this dialog with the IE Downoad Manager?If we think about it, downloading a file is very similar to copy a file over the network. You get the same challenges about limited bandwidth, concurrent downloads,...
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Would it be too much to ask to have a key combination for 'Invert Selection'?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Wauw....this looks very cool! Can't wait for the BETA to arrive!!!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Sometimes trying to delete or modify a file in any other way causes Windows to report that the file cannot be modified due to it being in use and offer to try again.That is a good behavior but naturally, Windows should assume that user's wishes are more important than those of the process that have file in use. I hope that Windows 8 team will address this issue and give user more control over his files and will ensure that file handles will not get corrupted.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions. Please keep them coming. To answer a few questions that people have posed:@gawicks - conflicts are all queed to the end of the copy job. So we finish all the copies that don't have name collisions, and then ask you to resolve the remaining conflicts.@Hypernova - the "More details" is sticky - once you open it, all your future copy jobs will show more details until you close it.From the comments it sounds like my post might be a bit confusing in terms of how often users will see the conflict resolution dialog. If you watch the video, you'll see that when we detect a name collision the first dialog is pretty simple and has only three options (replace, skip or choose). We expect that in the large majority of cases people will just pick replace. It's only if you choose to choose for each file that you get to the resolution dialog.Also thanks for the feedback on colors. We're still working on final color schemes.Regards,Alex
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Thank you for investing time and effort in this crucial area. From my point of view there are two thing's that I would further improve: 1) Altthouhg the "conflicting files" dialog looks far more clean than previous ones, I would simply rename the actions that are on the top of the list to "Overwrite files in <location>" and "Keep files in <location>". 2) this one hasn't been mentioned in your blog post, but please make explorer UAC aware! It is really cumbersome to get multiple confirmation dialogs(even when you run as an administrator on a server). Thank you, Christian
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Checkboxes are small. Just click the image. Bigger target. How will this integrate with the tablet / tiles UI shown off at All Things D? The big question on a lot of people's minds is whether it's possible to maintain the touch-friendly (and simple) interface without dropping into a traditional Windows UI.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Looks good. What about the option from 7 where you could select 'do this for the next n conflicts'?For example, if doing a simple backup of 100s of images by copying the content of a directory to another directory in which we have 10 new images.Then I do not want to have to check 100s of checkboxes in order to leave existing files 'as is'.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
A long time wish list as windows user to allow to pause copy paste operations.Seems very intresting, do this will get backport to windows 7 using SP2 in near future???
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Good improvements. Just one thing though: I am not sure removing the merge warning was a good idea. It is always nice to know when I am merging contents of folders.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
@Steven SinofskyThats cool. Yesterday i thought about that and posted that in the USB3.0 post and now i saw this video and you already implent such a feauture.Great work. and progress.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
It really bugged me when he hit 'more details', then had to drag the window back up to the center of the screen, because the details didn't fit in view.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Will it be possible to pause the copy operation and resume it after reboot/sleep/hibernate? The scenario is following - sometimes I have to copy many/big files, but have no time to wait for completion. I want to be able to shutdown the PC and it will resume the copy after restart. Will be also great to have an option to shutdown the PC after copy operation completes.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
@AlexSi So if I choose "More Detail" once, and every actions is done. Then, next time I do another copy/move job (let's say after a restart), the file transfer dialog will appear with More Detail by default? Or do you mean it's only sticky until the dialog is closed? If it's the former, then that's great! If it's the latter, though, then please make an option to make it permanent. And thanks for you answer.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Will you be bringing back the Power Calculator? Have to use compatibility mode to run on Windows 8 now,
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I'm assuming there's no plans to add any type of CRC validation to the copy process (think TeraCopy with validate turned on)?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I also vote for gray as the color for the paused file transfer. I think red is too "worrisome" a color to be used for paused transfers.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Very nice.To people - take a look at the video. It answers many of your questions and shows UI that wasn't showcased in the blog post.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I want to see the full Ribbon!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Looks good. I find the pause feature quit neat. An extension to that would be able auto-resume (or some sort of queuing mechanism). Maybe have an option "Resume after..." then selecting which file to resume after.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Very cool stuff.It would be very cool to have advanced renaming functionality which allows users to select multiple files and rename them with a Pattern, RegEx etc...
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I really like the unification of windows/dialogue boxes, so as FremyCompany mentions with IE downloads, what about other copy/move processes, can they (and developers in general hook into this?I hope so, because this could really eliminate a lot of clutter, and most users (in my experience) are very poor at generalizing concepts if they appear in different contexts. Look at how copy/paste works for pretty much any text editing now, I'd love it if you can make the same conceptual unity work for file operations. So, if copy/move operations go to one place it would help casual users' conceptual understanding of various tasks.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
It's great to centralise the copy / moves on a single windows but as written above, it must include a queue.In fact the default behaviour should be a queue, let me explain my idea. User typically don't want to lunch multiples copy / move at the same time, what they want is lunch multiples actions, go get a coffee and come back to seen all the job finished.When you lunch multiples action on the same set of disk it take much more time to finish that if you queue them.Windows explorer should work like IE, allow x (let say 2) action on the same physical disk (not partition) at the same time, and after the x is reached queue any job added. of curse the user should be able to force start a job.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Looks just like copy/paste embeded in KDE since 4.0.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
This may be resolved in Windows 7 - still using XP - but reserving space in the destination dir before copy is started might be an idea. Often I've started a cut/copy of a large amount of files that fails before finishing because I've run out of disk space mid-way. At least roll back the cut/copy!Later,Ivan
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Yes, I definately think that a queue would be vital, so that multiple copy jobs occur one after the other, to optimise speeds and remove drive thrashing.Looking at the UX for choosing which files to overwrite - aiming for a tiny checkbox is not easy, so I trust you'll simply be able to press/click on the whole thumnail/icon area.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Finally finally finally!Good start but can still be much better.The "choose files" dialog is a nightmare for any job with more than 3 files.Checkboxes are small and annoyingNo batch-decision (i.e only keep newer files, only keep larger files), check the filezilla conflicting-file-dialog www.artfuldancer.com/.../FTP_FileZilla_03upload2.gif it might no be so fancy but the options are really powerful yet easy to understand. No option for "keep both files but add (1) to the new copy". 4a. Ability to open each file directly from the dialog to study details of it4b. You could even add a button that says "compare in external program" that opens up a diff-tool. I'm not asking for complete source control built into explorer but even non-programmers should really learn about diffing. (even Word has a built in compare-function!).To be honest it feels like your bolting on bling bling and simplifications instead of redefining the whole copy-file-paradigm. This could have been done much better. Why should i have to care about confilcts anyway? Just save all versions of the file and create a nice interface for this instead (ehum OSX time machine cough). Seriously, even my mom uses dropbox on a day-to-day basis, people have more than one disk and a usb-stick nowadays. You have to rethink the the whole concept of file management. This is your flagship OS for the future, not some third party explorer-enhancement.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
This is good... Especially for me because i'm transferring large amount of data from ext hdd to pc and reverse.Also, it would be nice if there is auto-rename option, especially for photos.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Windows copy / paste does not work well for copying large files over the network. If the copy is interrupted you have to start over. Please fix this.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Regarding the color of the paused copies I think red would be a bad choice, because when it would be red I would instantly think there was an error during file copy. The color I would prefer for paused copies would be gray.Nevertheless - yay!!! We can pause file copies!!! Good work!Besides that I'm totally with @Eric: please fix this annoying behavior of Windows Explorer!answers.microsoft.com/.../50a81b05-da98-4d55-821d-55ffbbd0e998 connect.microsoft.com/.../bug-when-expanding-folders-in-explorer-server-2008-r2-and-windows-7
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
hey guys great work... but why not queue in the first place instead of making the user pause actions and resme? ...or at least give the user an option to auto resume after the first transfer is complete
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
It's really nice that you do something like this, I especially like the idea of having all the copy operations in one window. But, it solves the problem that noone has. Really, copying, moving and deleting are very good already and you shouldn't spend time on fixing them.If you want to focus on real issues, look at www.windows7taskforce.com and fix all the UI inconsistencies. Get rid of icons from windows 95. Make windows are resizable. It's not the 90's anymore, you know.And please, please, create a modern terminal, like there are in linux of mac os x. LCI in windows is ugly, you cannot resize it freely and hasn't change a bit since windows 95. A disgrace.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I really like the new copy/move dialog, and you can make it even better if its something like this - "All file management dialogs under one window but each file management dialog having it's own process, so if one dialog gets really jammed then other dialog with isolated processes are not affected". I am not sure if I explained it good but I hope you get my point. Thanks
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Speaking of Windows Explorer, copy, paste, and all that jazz; when will you guys implement "tabs" in Windows Explorer. And when will we have dual (or multiple) panes. Do we have pay money to get basic functionality? Why can't you do things as simple as that? Why?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Looks definitely like a big improvement to the Win7 copy dialogs! I would change the window title, however, to indicate more that these are file operations initiated from Windows Explorer. "Actions" is too generic imho.Using red as the color for the stopped copy operation is a bad idea in my opinion, as red not only means "STOP" but more often "ERROR". It also attracts attention (this is the idea with the traffic lights) which isn't the goal here. I'd go for gray as some others have suggested. Red could be used to signal an error as it is done in Windows 7.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Admittedly @Rafał I remember www.windows7taskforce.com did bring up a lot of UI inconsistencies and silly things that should be resolved, look there and draft a sensible list of out-dated UI elements to be updated for Windows 8.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Very nice work. I don’t like the “If you select both versions, the copied file will have a number added to its name” that sound confusing compared to the old “The file you are coping will be renamed “filename (2).JPG”.I understand that Windows will be mainly a mouse-and-keyboard (or pen-based) OS but, as some people says, this windows seems very difficult to use with a touch devices. Have you tried this windows on a pen-and-touch Tablet PC like the Dell Latitude XT2, the HP Elitebook 2740p, the Fujitsu Lifebook T901 or Asus Eee Slate EP121? How do you think that the user experience will be on a Microsoft-style Tablet PC?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I like what I see with the throughput graphs. I hope that more detailed telemetry dialogs show up elsewhere in the system, where it makes sense. This would make a power user feel like one again.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Dear ALL, Dear Windows8 Team,Here are some suggestions which could be implemented in order to improve user experience...1- Conflict Resolution dialogIn this window the user can't choose the name of the files... Imagine if 2 pictures (or more) have the same name, but are totally different. You would want to keep both...But it would be very interesting to be able to edit the name of each file directly from the dialog by clicking on it's name (for example) so the user doesn't have to go to the folder and edit the name afterwards ...After copy, the name would be good and no time lost to go and rename ... =)2 - Pending copy jobs dialog (Multiple jobs)In this window, your implementation requires that the user modifies himself the priority by a click on pause/resume . In this case you assume the user is here but sometimes he has to leave... the process continues but that doesn't necessary mean the user had no priorities... Problem: he wont be able to manage jobs...Maybe a solution would be to give each job a priority by beeing able, in this dialog, to drag and drop the jobs on a top position of the list if it needs to be done in a specific order. This feature could be enabled by adding a global pause button that would process each job individually in order after the first in the list is done...3 - Copy priorityThe same proposition of priorities could apply in the normal single copy job window :In W7 the last file selected, is the active one, so it is the first to apply the action Copy/Move/Delete ... etc...It would be much more interesting if the files were processed in the order you selected them (the user usually select files in the same order he thinks to it, meaning often by alphabetic or interest/priority order)If its a random selection that doesn't change anything...Wishing you all good luck ! =) Thanks !Benjamin B.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
You are fiddling on the margins.The best way to help users manage their files is to revert to a dual pane file manager, oops, sorry, file explorer, to allow easy manipulation of source and destination directory trees.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
It would be nice to have the option to rename old files as well as new files.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Additional ideas, which maybe completely unfeasible and you guys have already brainstormed:Could you add a priority level (if you have multiple copy operations, some could take place at higher level then others).Also it would be great if you could start continue copy operation when another task is say 50% complete. This could be achieved if the progress bar could be dragged to the right.When copying files can there be a transform operation. To copy file from A to B (but on B it is zipped), or jpeg changed to bmp. It should also be possible to copy a zip file and have it uncompress from A to B
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
These changes seems little but will have a huge impact in user point of view.Well done Microsoft! keep it up.bye
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
argh how ugly centered window titles >_<
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Has the 256 character limitation (like in XP) been resolved with regards pathway length being exceeded being when performing backups?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Additional ideas, which maybe completely unfeasible and you guys have already brainstormed:When copying a directory should be possible to filter the list of files, based on file name, size or file type.Could it be possible to hook into this copy operations, so for example have a rule where an email is sent if a file is copied. Or we determine are one naming rules etc
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Very positive changes. I'd like to for the copy job to continue while items that are causing problematic are skipped, i.e. if there is a list of 50 files being copied, and there's a problem with the second file, then the 3rd etc would continue to copy and only those with problems are highlighted and held up. I'd proposed that if there was some sort of flag or attribute set on the file to indicate that the file is due to be copied/moved and what the reason for the lack of the activity was, so that when moving large amounts of files the ones without problems can be actioned, and those that had a problem could be dealt with separately, at source.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Very very nice. Finally a complete copy and move management. I like the unified window for all ongoing transfers and the Pause button. :)I don't really like the elimination of some dialogs. They could be annoying, but they're also useful. If I move to the Recycle Bin a file I didn't want to move there, why should I go to the Recycle Bin to restore it? Yeah, that was my fault, but if there's a confirmation dialog I could avoid the mistake. Same for folder merge. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.PS: other two things. Please, make the Ribbon Explorer an option. And that Start button visible at the beginning of the video is really ugly, better to stick with the current one.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I think that a few users pointed out that there isn't a "Copy, but keep both files" option from Windows 7. Do I assume then that when clicking the "Choose" option that ticking files from "Files from..." and "Files already in..." will perform the same action?Other than that, think the new copying interface is great so far.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I really like the direction you are taking this but:A queuing feature would be very much appreciated! I want to be able to initiate all my copying and have Windows figure out what to queue based on what disks the copying affects, and then don't bother.If the same could be done for unzipping that would be great as well.If I get these additions, I wouldn't need a 3:rd party tool. :)
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
One of the most annoying things in Windows 7 Explorer is trying to delete a file and getting a message saying : "Cannot delete file because some application is still using it" (or something along these lines).What application? Where? Could you provide in Windows 8 an option to force delete a file?Thanks and keep the good work!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I just do not believe this !Only sixteen years of developing, and now it is ! Advanced copy progress bar for Window$ !Respect, M$ developers !Pardon; "developers".
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Love the "Choose Files" dialog, but you've only shown it with several screenshots. I can imagine there are users that have a large amount of conflicting names. At such times I really hope there is an op option to filter them by date and maybe have a searchbox.Also, what's the default behavior when copying folders that have file name collisions (not files as in the screenshots)? Will they silently merge or will we get a "Choose Folders" dialog? Great work so far!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I agree with Hugo Nogueira.There should be at least the info which process is preventing file from being deleted. Better yet, you can automatically close the process and start it again when deleting is done.Also I'm wondering what happens when you have many copy/move jobs? The screen height has its limits. Especially when you put in "detailed view" mode. Is there just a vertical scroll bar for this cases?I would suggest to distribute copy/move jobs vertically AND horizontally (two columns would be great) when reaching 4,5 vertically positioned jobs, so the need for scroll bar would appear a bit later.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
..great inbuilt support ..to replace installed teracopy and etc s/wthanks..
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Sadly you still haven't solved the most common problem: If something goes wrong while copying a folder (or a bunch of files), half of the files are in the new location, half are in the old location. Please give us transactioned file copy.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Good work in file manager!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Looks great, finally I can get rid of TeraCopy and all the bugs in it..Looking forward to Win8!!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I agree with @Jack the SlayerSadly you still haven't solved the most common problem: If something goes wrong while copying a folder (or a bunch of files), half of the files are in the new location, half are in the old location. Please give us transactioned file copy.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
These are some very welcomed and nice changes, team. Very slick.Also, I agree with Jack the Slayer. If you could just improve on that or fix it in some way, I'm sure we'd all appreciate it.Now let me in the beta. I've been using MS products since DOS and not once have you let me into the beta. Time to let us veterans in.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I thinks move files in Windows is slow than copy then delete file. I just feels its but I hope if this's real, its would better in Windows 8
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Great improvements but, why not implement a list of copy/move/delete that you can pause/resume/modify. I am thinking in the functionality of supercopier2 et al which I find indispensable.Also, FastCopy will automatically evaluate source and destinations and when copy jobs they are to conflict in resources they're automatically queued instead of executed in parallel.Oh, and copy lists also enable collisions and copy error in an elegant, way (no need to stop the 20k file job mid way because of a collision with a minor file like thumbs.db)
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
This is excellent stuff, this is exactly the kind of stuff that I needed to improve...I like it a lot!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
This is just lovely and great. I've been following closely and reading a few comments myself i see that this is from one of the comments i read yesterday. This give me great hope that windows 8 will be even more amazing then windows 7 was. Your reading these comments and taking all of the feedback into consideration and it keeps my faith alive and running for Microsoft. Thank you for caring about your customers and listening to them. Keep doing this and windows 8 will be AMAZING. Just don't rush anything. I love the UI and i like this idea but as with others i agree with there is room for improvement. I like the Ribbon being in Internet explorer just make sure like the Ribbon in Office 2010 it's customizable.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
My bad i meant i like the Ribbon in windows explorer. That's what i meant my mistake. Anyway just make sure the Ribbon in Windows explorer is customizable.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Looks great! Thanks for not overlooking the small bits and pieces. Windows 8 should obviously have new and shiny functionality, but even if it didn't, at the bare minimum it needs to improve upon existing features in all previous versions of Windows. This is a great step in that direction! Thanks for the effort!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Excelente buen camino.... ya tienen un comprador
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Please add queuing! Allow to queue operation or even add automatic queue/pause to one operation per device.Thanks!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Can we get a blog post on what changes you guys have done to the Control Panel? Hopefully it's a lot tidier and cleaner :)
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I hope this time you will teach Explorer to remember the state of More/Less Details and "Do this for all conflicts" switches. :)Other than that, TeraCopy and many other utilities mentioned here contain the directions to improve (quequing when working with the same media is the top one), no need in invent anything radical. Heck, even Norton Commander was able to remember "Do this for all conflicts" setting, and it's still not implemented in Windows..What I would suggest as a REAL MAJOR improvement is the fully implemented Undo feature, which will undelete files, move everything back and even if you'we overwritten some files - restore those. So if I added 50 files and 3 dirs into a directory that already had another 250 files and 15 dirs and replaced 5 of them, I could go back with just one Ctrl-Z. Your new Job list interface is excellent for that - just keep the log of all actions and display the "Undo" button once the job is completed/paused/interrupted. You already have Shadow Copies and System Restore mechanism - this is just the next level.Some other feats:If I used removable drives as source/destination for my job - the undo feature should lett me "Please insert the removable media labeled <VOLUME LABEL>" and give me the options to Cancel or proceed w/o the removable media (i.e. if I moved files from USB stick to HDD, they will be removed from HDD, but not restored on the stick, because I haven't inserted it). As a totally fantastic (and doubtful) experience - cache those files and offer to restore them once the removable media is back. :) Advanced user should have control over this feature on a per-drive basis: enable/disable, max. size of files to be cached/shadowed in case of overwriting (I would not want this for 4.5G ISO images) and the size of Undo file cache in either megabytes or days. Global options should include enabling/disabling support for removable drives as well and disabling this feature altogether.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
When I am copying 1GB or more of p o r n from 1 folder to another, I want to keep all of the pictures. Can't it just automatically add a number to them without asking me?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I really wish there was the option to copy the file from the left and rename the file on the right in addition to the copy the file from the left and rename it. I often find that I am copying a "newer" file into a folder and want it to keep the original name but would like to keep the original one in the folder on the right around as a backup.Essentially backup the file in the folder I am copying into by renaming it and then copy in the file being copied with the original name.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
On my last ms conference visit i asked the speakers about pause/resume button on copy dialog. They said it was stupid and I have not received the prize for the smart questions. But this MS solution contained copy/resume buttons! I should have patented this approach!!!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
This is some good stuff guys, keep up the good work. I noticed that the paused files are still showing a download transfer rate, this shouldn't be the case since there is no transfer going on. I know you have promised a UI change so I won't comment on that. For those that keep complaining about the yellow color being used for pause, it clearly says PAUSE so I don't see a problem here. Also in windows Red is usually reserved for errors.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Unrelated question but what have guys got planned in regards to gestures for touchpads? The new UI you showed worked great on touchscreens but the jury is still out on how it will work for the keyboard and mouse, gestures I feel could help blend the two input methods together really nicely.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I recommend the Windows team take a look at a lesser known copy addon called PerigeeCopy (jstanley.pingerthinger.com/pscopy.html) that also offers a number of interesting ideas. It's main goal is the same: merge copy/delete operations in a single window/action, one at a time and ensure copy and delete operations are done with less/smarter prompts. The Windows team can put file copying related options in "Folder Options".
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
@AlexSi********One more thing***********In the 'Conflict resolution' dialog the files from the Source folder should be auto-checked ; Since this reflects the default behaviour.Didn't you guys notice that there is some confusion over what happens to 'Kobenhavns......jpg' in the example (since both checkboxes are unchecked)Thanks
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Folks, thanks for starting this blog, I admire the initiative to get feedback from community! Here is some feedback regarding file differences during copy process:I use Total Commander when I need to copy large amount of files. It has a feature called Synchronize Directories which I think has the best UI for understanding the differences between the files. It also, I think, is the best UI to make a decision on the difference. Please check it out!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
thanks for the changes. They look nice, but you should still implement a queue feature.And please improve the Deleting performance. This is a nightmare in Windows. For example, check out several branches, tags from a version control and try to delete the folders. During times time the PC is nearly unusable.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I would like be able to queue a list of files to copy them to some device. So every fiel will be copied one by one. It will be also intresting to be able to keep adding files while they are being copied
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
The Microsoft tool called ROBOCOPY.EXE has an /EFSRAW switch that I use all the time to copy/backup EFS-encrypted files to another drive without decrypting the files first. Will the new Win8 copy feature support this by default? What about EFS copy improvements in general, such as copying over the network when the destination server does not have access to one's EFS private key? Thank You!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
The conflict resolution dialog should show the resolution of image-files, to make it easier to decide which image I want to keep. For example, the same image as Android wallpaper or desktop wallpaper. Would look the same, when just watching the thumbnails of both files. But with the resolution visible, I could choose that I want to keep the higher resolution.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Looks sensible. I hope there's a 'touch first' version of all this with an immersive experience. I wouldn't want to have to plug a mouse in just to move some files around if I was using a tablet.Would also be interested how the selection dialog handles a tree of directories. The list of files seems like a flat approach.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I see a new start button in the video...
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
What about interface of Windows Explorer in touch screen devices?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Actually, maybe the orb is blurred enough so I can't see it... unless the computer we don't get a close look at is different than the 1 we do, & they're both running different Win 8 builds...
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Nautilus in GNOME on Linux has been doing this for years - yet another thing Microsoft copies.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
First i would recommend you to restyle Pause/Close buttons. Make them bigger, or something. And second reduce height of transfer graphs.Also i'm corius about what we see in background on big screen. Taskbar will look like this? From this point what i see is actualy taskbar i imagined windows 8 should have. Hope we will see soon more...
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
This is some what different from the normal copy feature and this is more advanced when compared with Tera Copy and this feature made the following additional features.Copying of dual processes is made easy.Copying the files made faster made a new aspect namely select of files while copying. This is really a good stuff and made easier way of copying.Can anyone please say me how to make it enabled in my PC?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I love what is being worked on - look forward to the changes.I do agree with comments that the "resolve files" dialog is a UX disaster. I tend to agree with Phil B who writes that the typical use-case is to keep the files with the action associated, and that this dialog presents both cases with equal weight, and equal awkwardness of selection. Figure out from your telemetry the 80/20 typical use-cases, and design around it.Take a look at the typical usage arcs presented in Microsoft's layout guidelines here: msdn.microsoft.com/.../aa511279.aspxsmooth curves (1-2-4), avoid zig-zag windows, etc.I would also suggest that the conflict-resolution not interrupt the overall process, and instead be reserved for the end of the action, in order to facilitate unattended scenarios.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
USB 3.0 - it's cool, but what about Thunderbolt in a new OS?
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
The logic of selecting neither version of a conflicting file seems flawed. If I don't check either the new or the old one, in answer to the question "Which files do you want to keep?", then that seems to imply that they both will be deleted -- which is obviously not the case.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Very many professional users using all over the world TotalCommander (www.ghisler.com/index.htm) on Windows. But I'm very happy about this improvements within W8! Keep the good work!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
IMO, "Windows 7 Conflict Resolution dialog" looks way better than the proposed solution.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
We should be able to click the graph to show a "maximal speed" bar, and move it to the desired speed. This means you can give a certain operation priority without having to be there when it finishes (if you paused other operations, they won't continue...)(I didn't read all 180 comments, no idea if this was already suggested)
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I have two requests:#1If I go to delete, rename, copy or move a file or folder, Windows Explorer should immediately cancel all background information-gathering operations that are causing locks on the affected files or folders. It is extremely frustrating the number of times I've tried to delete folders with videos and other media only to tell me that the "file is in use", when in fact it is Windows Explorer holding stuff in memory so it can read file dates and create thumbnail previews.#2You need to find a faster way to sort the contents of a large folder. For example, I have an images folder with about a thousand images. I have it defaulted to sort by file date, but every time I open the folder I have to wait upwards of 10-20 seconds while it reads all the file dates so it can sort them correctly. Previous versions of Windows never had to spend lots of time reading file dates every time I entered a folder, so it puzzles me why Windows 7 suddenly needs to do this in a clearly less-efficient manner.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
Good to see that basic functions in Windows 8 are getting a revamp. Nice Job!
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
@AlexSi - You should update the main blog post showing the dialog that occurs before the Conflict Resolution dialog is shown, a lot of people haven't watched the video or found your post in the sea of comments and are assuming that the dialog is what is always shown when a conflict arises.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
This is very good, Much better Windows Explorer UI.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I wish there was an ADD also, where only the files that are not on the receiving side are added.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
It is nice, I would like to push the point that there should be options for the followingcontinue all non conflicting copy operations ( that is except for this particular file/folder all other non conflicting operations should continue.the copy dialog boxes should be at the very begining or at the very end. (Look @ windows installation, you gather all info then start) it will be great if the recycle bin had an option to go hierarchical rather than showing 100000 items all at same level.. and we need to do sort by folder. *tera copy nails the copy procedure. But it is annoying when i need to do a move. WIndows explorer is faster than teracopyAlso make it sit in the system tray.Looking forward for the Windows explorer bolg listing enhancement.tabbed browsing/ ribbon / hope of eliminate right click and easy way to compare files
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I welcome the improvements outlined in this blog post and demonstrated in the related video. On a related topic, I sincerely hope that Microsoft and the Windows development teams are seriously researching and implementing modern features and functionality in the NTFS file system (or a replacement ‘default’ Windows file system). As a long-time proponent of Windows, I would like to have an answer for the features and functionality of the ZFS file system.While Windows Vista and Windows 7 have made important incremental improvements to NTFS, I believe the original design decisions and features are showing their age. Given its age, it is a testament to the fundamental design decisions that NTFS has adapted so effectively thus far. However, much research and innovation in the file system space has lead to NTFS falling seriously behind the advanced features offered by more modern file systems.Please share with us how Microsoft and the Windows teams are addressing this for Windows 8 and future Windows operating systems.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
The yellow color for pause screen looks like warning color, like something is not right or copying slow. User understands green is OK, yellow is warning, red is NOT OK. So, I think it's better to use grey color instead for pause. Just my 2c.Anyway, it's a nice and pleasant improvement. Keep it coming.. :)
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
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Anonymous
August 23, 2011
If you wanted to leave the Yellow color, I'd put a big "Paused" on the yellow graph... not just above it. Though I'd prefer a Grey graph.
Anonymous
August 23, 2011
I went ahead and created a mockup of changes I think would make the File Dialog better, color groupings. As well the name of the file is on both sides, if you click it you can rename it, and some arrows.i51.tinypic.com/333v1og.jpg
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@JL said..."You know when you start a big copy job and realize that you are doing it over the wireless. So you grab a network cable and plug it in. Does the file copy know to utilize the faster connection now? "Nope, it doesn't work like that. If you start a file copy on one connection it will continue on that connection until completed. If you started a really big file copy operation on wireless and want to switch to wired you should cancel it, connect the net cable and then restart the file copy job.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I can see IT Pros loving features such as throughput graph. But what about average computer users? Does this feature help Windows compete against iOS? I don't think so.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
"Any Windows user knows that it's the small changes that make a big difference! THANK YOU!"Indeed, just the inclusion of "New Folder" in the explorer chrome in 7 made me incredibly happy. I am a huge organization nerd when it comes to my folder structure, so it is actually a fairly used feature for me.In terms of file management, what would be super awesome is transparent version management, so that I can copy over files but still check previous versions should I have messed something up. That would be beautiful (and HDD manufacturers would love you for consuming more space, even if some of the consumers might complain)
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@Dennis MSFT Surely it would be expected that if connection is lost/interrupted the file copy operation would pause and then resume on the replacement connection? Certainly this is the behaviour I would expect, especially in scenarios where I may be connected via Wifi in patchy areas, 3g, etc. Its not uncommon for notebooks to disable the WIFI interface when an Ethernet cable is plugged in, creating a similar scenario.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Any improvements to the file system and NTFS? This is really needed.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
In the "Choose Files" dialog, checkboxes are too hard to target with a mouse or a finger. Make each file selectable by clicking on its thumbnail, and highlight it to show it's selected. Much quicker and more intuitive.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Guys I love this! Especially the pause button
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Wow, nice!! Pretty impressive and yes, often it's the small things that make a difference.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Todd makes a very important point. See the XP (classicshell.sourceforge.net/.../after.png) or Vista (classicshell.sourceforge.net/.../before.png) dialogs: It shows (Newer) or (Larger) so the user does not have to figure that out himself. Please take care to not drop that useful information the new file conflict dialog!!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
USELESS 0.0Make Windows run properly.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I haven't read all the comments yet so don't if someone already said it, please forgive otherwise...While I don't really see much of a problem with the transfer colors (green ongoing, yellow paused) I do see a problem having the same button for both operations, the ongoing/active copy job should display a pause button ( [II] ) as it does now but the paused one should display a start button ( [>] ) otherwise the meaning of the displayed button is misleading. Everyone use different means to understand what he/she sees (for many is whatever the text says, for others is visual clues, like a button)Other thing (and I know this have been mentioned but let me second it): the text explaining what's gonna be done if conflictive files are keeped. While I do like the copy resolution dialog I think there should a clearer message like the previous dialog: "Copy, but keep both files - The file you're copying will be renamed File_Name (2).ext". That's much much clear that saying "a number is going to be added to its name" . I know I know, "I" understand (being tech-savvy-like person) what it means a number added to its name, you could even not write that and I would presume that would be the action to be taken, and yes, today many understand more OS concepts without being savvy but there will be the ones (like some comment I read here) that won't understand what a "number added to its name" is gonna mean.Finally, the thumbnails for the conflict dialog, while not all that bad, I think that's going to create the opposite effect of helping users to do the copy jobs faster/efficiently, it has the potential to be distracting (Imaging the user pausing just to see the image "hmmm are really the same? hmmm it looks like it, oh no, wait, it seems that the one on the right has a little white point the other doesn't, hmmm what should I do, hmm....")
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Love every bit of new file management implementations. Keep up the good work. Go Windows, Go Microsoft!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Will the prompts which we get currently for system files or read-only files remain? Again, there can be an option about it in Folder Options.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Why are we allowed to keep both files changing the filename of the file being copied and not changing the file name of the file that's already there? In 90% of my experience I'm copying a new file in a folder that already has an old version, so it would be much better to alter the name of the existent file, IMO.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I think the color scheme should be simplified:1) Green - normal transfer speed2) Yellow - <30% average transfer speed3) Red - <10% average transfer speed4) Grey - Paused
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Hiding the 'Maximise' button (rather then greying it out) when it's not usable would be a nice touch on all dialogue boxes. Thanks for all the great work on Windows in general too! :)
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
LOL, I guess I should have waited to ask the question I did on the last blog post, because this answered a lot!As far as pausing transfers, is there a way to make them automatically resume when the previous one is done? Like, queuing file transfers, so they all move at a fast speed and you don't have to manually unpause each?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Great job on File Copy! and Awesome comments from Todd, Marc, Will, Vladimir, x9.There are a few things that I believe should be incorporated in the Windows UI, borrowing from web:Windows should be able to show no dialogue for copying/moving file. It should work seamless. the color progress bar on explorer icon in the Task bar that shows copying is in progress. Especially if you're moving to tile based interface for the tablets. Dialog Boxes in general belong to the past: the area of windowed Windows! Dring a file copy Windows might encounters a few file conflicts. It stops file copy and waits for user input for 3 files out of thousands. Windows could use the time while user decides to copy the rest of files that have no conflict. This is very irritating when you start copying and leave the PC hoping for the copy to be finished when you're back and you find it stuck on the 5th file out of 2000 files waiting for your input.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
The problem with transactioned copy is: what if you are recovering files from media which can be read with great difficulty or which will be unavailable later (like a network location or domain)? In that case, I would want what was already copied to remain instead of starting all over again.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
The new features look great. But, please fix tihs issue first before any new features are worked on.connect.microsoft.com/.../bug-when-expanding-folders-in-explorer-server-2008-r2-and-windows-7
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Love these videos! Hope there is a new one everyday!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I hope you've also sped up the process of copying from a CD/DVD. That has always been a horribly slow process - much slower than it should be even considering that the drives are slower than hard drives.Also, I agree with Robbo 23 Aug 2011 8:57 PM - "What about that problem where you're copying hundreds of files and there's a problem somewhere and instead of telling you the problem and what you can do to fix it, the whole thing just stops, and you have to manually find the problem, sort it out, and then start the whole copy procedure again. That would be good to be fixed also." Trying to avoid that problem is why I installed Teracopy. It helps but even it can run into issues. It woiuld be nice to have them fixed. I seem to have a particularly bad time copying fonts.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Please add the number to each comment for easy searching!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
These improvements, while slightly are overdue.. ;), are just great. As have been mentioned throughout these comments, I would feel even more excited if there was, for example an option to choose all most recent files (and other similar options). I actually expect Windows 8 to be and to look just great in every single aspect, and I hope Microsoft does just that.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Great idea and well implemented! I do hope the graph of the transfer speed get's a UI overhaul - bring those smug mac user's down a notch.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Also don't forget keyboard usability of the "Choose Files" dialog. Considering tab key or arrow keys based navigation, the bottom buttons and top most checkboxes which are for the entire column should be together instead of separating them by the filename conflict list.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
The conflict resolution dialog needs a bit of work. The horizontal lines separating the files make it difficult to see that the labels at the top are column labels and not simply another row. In other words, it's not clear that the data are separated into columns -- the horizontal lines are counter to the way you're trying to organize and display the data as columns.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Looks great!Another agree on:Robbo 23 Aug 2011 8:57 PM - "What about that problem where you're copying hundreds of files and there's a problem somewhere and instead of telling you the problem and what you can do to fix it, the whole thing just stops, and you have to manually find the problem, sort it out, and then start the whole copy procedure again. That would be good to be fixed also."I've always been amazed this hasn't been fixed yet. Even just the option to ignore the problem file(s) and keep going would have saved me a lot of time over the years. It just dies with everything half copied.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
It would be GREAT if we could upvote and downvote comments! It would reduce double comments and would set priorities.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Wow, 20 years later, it could not have been a moment too late :-)
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Wow, 20 years later, it could not have been a moment too late :-)
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Is the number preceding the "MB/s" units in those graphs really a power-of-ten based MB/s number, or is it a power-of-two based number that should be accompanied by "MiB/s" units?Apple OS X switched to real decimal numbers a while ago, so their "MB" numbers are correct. Microsoft should do the same.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Would be nice if the file system copy process is faster. On a Mac, I can copy and move files much much faster than on windows.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Nice stuff ms could u add option to run the ction whjle idle :-)
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Another request for a queue system if either the source or destination file shares a physical drive. Nothing more annoying than needing to copy multiple files in different location on one drive,, and watching the entire process take 5 times as long just because its trying to do them all at the same time. Thanks!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Another request for a queue system if either the source or destination file shares a physical drive. Nothing more annoying than needing to copy multiple files in different location on one drive,, and watching the entire process take 5 times as long just because its trying to do them all at the same time. Thanks!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Does anyone know a little more about the UI with a mouse? I was watching the first video (linked earlier in the article) which I had never seen and as much as it looks beautiful and amazing I have to wonder how 'fluid' and 'simple' these things will be without a touch screen. Unless this is only meant for tablets and not regular desktop pcs because who really has touch capability on their primary pcs?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
What would the chances of a multi-pane windows explorer feature so a person can look at the contents of two or more folder simultaneously in one windows explorer instance? Or, add tabs to windows explorer for multiple folder viewing. That would be helpful and useful! Either would be very useful, but the first one would be most helpful!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Dear microsoftWe need a new filesystem in Windows 8, improving a new and mor emodern filesystem can stop the OS file fragmeentation or at least reduce it to very low levels.This is great news BTW ,and i am waiting news regarding the optimization of a new filesystem
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Awesome Really i liked it!!!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Wouldnt Leaving both checkboxes unchecked (as in the video) lead to some confusion ?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I know that when you are working and putting a lot of thought into your movements with mouse it is hard to hit small checkboxes. So I would suggest making it possible for the user to click on the image/text to select the needed copy, and don't forget about shift in case I have a dozen files and need lets say preserve the first 7 and replace the next 5 so I would prefer to click on the first then shift click on the last bunch of 7, then do the same with the other 5 or something like that. At least it will speed up the process of selecting between required files.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Just thought of an another thing that would make my life a bit easier: make a light highlight for newer files. Seeing dates as strings is nice, yet you have to think and translate those dates yet if there is even a light hint for the newer file then it will make decisions faster as you will not have to interpret dates, just use visual ques that are easier to process.And not to forget that files that are the same (ie dates and sizes are equal) then probably put them at the end of the list and gray them out probably to just show that it doesn't really matter which one.In short: add visual ques so that you need less brainpower to process a long list of files.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
the problem with the conflict resolution dialog for me is that it doesn't have clear outcomes the way the current single stage dialog does - I have to internalise that the left and right columns are source and target and then it makes sense to pick one file or the other, bolding shows me that a date is important and I can read them to say 'that's newer' but it's just not that clear. I'd like to see clearer, more actionable labels like LARGER, NEWER on the different files. You can't have single, large action buttons for multiple choice, but I think there could be a way to make the outcomes more obvious without me peering and counting on my fingers. And suppose there are 50 conflict files where only 2 have any difference in file size or modification date - is there an option to just see the files that don't detect as being the same?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
very cool! this looks like a great improvement that many people will appreciate.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Please fix the bug in Windows Explorer in Windows 7 which forces you to click on the files on the right pane before you can scroll down. Intuitively, one should only need to hover the mouse over the right pane to scroll up/down. But somehow it was implemented in such a way that if the left pane is active, when scrolling using a mouse wheel, regardless of the location of the mouse cursor, the left pane will be scrolled up/down.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I've waited long enough I think my post actually didn't go through, so I'll try again:Please consider using a checksum/file size/date algorithm to determine if the files are actually identical. If they are, I can't think of any situation where the source file can't simply be deleted (in the case of a move operation) or the file skipped (in the case of a copy operation), without any prompt whatsoever- the whole point of the command was to get "this" file into "that" directory, and since it already is, problem solved!Even if this has to be turned on as an option or registry key, it would save a lot of time and grief.Thanks so much for this blog- it's amazing to feel like you're listening, and that your users can help Windows 8 be even better!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
This is very impressive indeed.Two quick thoughts:ability to click on the file thumbnail as well as just the checkbox in the conflict resolution screen - esp for touch users if the target drive has an issue (eg full of accidentally unplugged), perhaps this could be treated like an interrupted IE download - ie resumable (eg space freed up or device reconnected). Perhaps it could turn its progress bar red when poorly to complete a traffic light theme!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Looks great!How does this interact with the 'Launch folder windows in a separate process' setting?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I'm glad you've redesigned the UI for resolving conflicts during file copying. I always found the Windows 7 Conflict Resolution dialog more confusing than the Windows XP Confirm File Replace dialog.Please don't neglect the keyboard interface for this UI. In Windows XP you could simply use Alt+A to choose "Yes to All" in the Confirm File Replace dialog. In Windows 7 this became Alt+D to select "Do this for all conflicts", followed by tabbing to the "Copy and Replace" button and pressing space to select. In Windows 8 the Replace or Skip Files dialog should support Alt+mnemonic for each of the 3 main options. Unfortunately the Choose Files dialog is probably too complicated to have a decent keyboard interface.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Great read. Copy dialog seems much better, file conflict dialog - not sure... Can selected items be more noticeable than just tiny check boxes?Also, window frames and ribbon tabs seem ugly so far. I hope ribbon ui will be enhanced with new ideas for Explorer.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Lets see if this goes through if I post it from Internet Explorer :)It would be very useful if when you cancelled a file copy or move, it prompts you if you want to undo what was already done. For example, "Move cancelled. Would you like to put the files that were already moved back in their original location?" or "Copy cancelled. Would you like to remove the files that were already copied?"I work in IT and periodically someone will tell me they're missing the contents of a folder starting with S-Z. What happened is someone accidentally moved the parent folder on the shared drive, it pops up the progress dialog, they see their mistake and press Cancel. However, they don't realize they have to move everything that was already copied back. This happens more than you would think.The only tricky part is what to do with overwritten files. If you have a shadow copy then you can just restore them silently. If you don't, well you already generated a list of conflicts beforehand in order to pop up the new dialog. If there's anything in that list that was overwritten you can add a note saying those particular files can't be restored and exclude them from the cleanup. By excluding them it means the worst case scenario of a copy+undo is a file overwritten with a different version and not that file being deleted completely.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I say try to make it such that the operations can be reversed and whenever there is a conflict, assume the most common response (probably overwrite) and save the questions (overwrite or not) for the end, then if the user decides not to overwrite, just undo that operation. Also, if the file you would overwrite is identical, you don't need to ask me, just overwrite (or just delete the original) because there is no data loss at all here. In fact, I would like to see a file system where duplicated files are actually just pointers to files and a diff file is generated when one file is modified. That way, I can have copies of files where-ever I want and it won't use an more space. Then, files become more of an organization technique...
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
First of all, thanks for the improvements, they look great. However, am I the only one who doesn't have a problem with the current conflict resolution dialog? It makes perfect sense to me. Also, what happens in the Windows 8 dialog when there is a large number of conflicts?A really nice native feature to have is the ability to scan a folder for files containing the same content (i.e. find duplicates) AND also integrate this into the conflict resolution dialog. Since duplicate checking requires hashing that may be time consuming, this would be best implemented as an option.Good work guys :)
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Really interesting follow your work here with Windows 8 guys!Thanks for having the opportunity sir in send a comment on your post in the subject 'Copy' 'Paste' etc.In make it simple there are one close related feature for the discussed task in this thread that need more space for improvements and further developing in specifically remember more former copied items.I have been going through earlier comments until wrote mine and couldn't find more than 3 touching the CLIPBOARD MANAGER which followed us quite some time though the versions of Windows operating systems.Would be by heaven sent see this manager become a bit more improved than it is for the moment as we have to trust third-party applications taking care of the task in cache and keep a database of saved transfers of files and content of text while working with for instance stuff we do everyday writing or together with the Explorer file-manager. It would make things much easier if Windows had this ability already there built inside.Finally, congratulations for the well done job here on your blog and good luck all teams !
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
99.9% of the time, the user wants to overwrite files when there's a conflict. When you don't want that, it's probably because you want to cancel the copy altogether. And nearly all the conflicts users get are between identical files. So does Explorer really need to ask me what to do on every conflict, as soon as it occurs? If the file is small and can be reasonably checke for equality, or there has been time to perform the check (say, because you're waiting for the user to answer another dialog), just scan the file and skip it if the source and destination are identical. And if the files are genuinely different, or if it's impractical to check that they're identical (perhaps because of file size), don't block the entire copying operation. Ask me, and keep copying in the background. And if more conflicts are found before I've answered the first one, coalesce them into one. Merge the newly found conflict information into the dialog that's already being shown. I don't want to have to hand-hold Explorer. I don't want to be "put in control". I want Explorer to be smart enough that I can just set it on autopilot. Tell it to copy those 17,000 files, get a cup of tea, and come back 5 minutes later and perhaps tell it what to do with all the conflicts it has found. (Even that could be avoided if the "copy" dialog had a simple checkbox for "overwrite conflicting files", which I could select before a conflict is found. Oh, and please tell me what the heck is going on with the statusbar at the bottom of the Explorer Window. It used to be single-row height, and contain all sorts of useful information, like "combined size of the selected files", and "free disk space in this location". Now, it's grown to double height, and contains virtually no information. "20 items", or "6 items selected", or a filename and last-modified time. What the heck? You needed twice the screen space just in order to remove all the useful information, replacing it with duplicate information that is listed clearly in the main part of the window? Oh, and how about teaching Explorer that we're no longer living in DOS. Files can have names starting with a dot.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Rob, I think where you say "Apple OS X switched to real decimal numbers a while ago, so their "MB" numbers are correct. Microsoft should do the same." Isn't that what "copy jobs" means?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Overlooked in all the musings about the file system improvements is the fact that we will still have access to the file system....HOORAY. One of the things I absolutely hate about my iPad is the sandboxing of applications and files. Moving files between applications is an atrocity on the iPad/iPhone, Android and even to a certain extent, WinPhone 7 products. I miss having access to my file system. If I want to copy a video to my phone or tablet, I don't want iTunes or Zune to tell me I can't, or that I need to convert it....stop with all that. I hope Windows 8 will solve these headaches for smaller form factor devices.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
That's cool!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Great Work B8 Team! Keep up the good work. This was actually one of the things I wished would change about Windows and now... U guys too much jare! ;-)
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I don't understand what one is supposed to DO with the information presented in the graph. It really just seems like a pretty picture to look at while the real work of copying continues at whatever pace it wants to. Or do you imagine that the user is going to try to understand the peaks and valleys? Perhaps launch PerfMon retrospectively to determine what processes were executing at the time? Agree with @Robert W. about keyboard support. I'm trying to imagine what a screen reader is going to do with these dialogs. The use of columns (like in the new Choose Files) is often a nightmare to navigate via speech. [My blind wife is paying me to make accessibility comments on these blog posts.]
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Following from Grumpy Wednesday's post, are you going to fix the 256 character limitation in paths for xcopy? With long file names having been in use since Windows 95, it is incredible that xcopy still has this limitation.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
just one word for ya "CUSTOMIZATION" and lots of it really we need more options to customize our desktop and windows.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
In my opinion, the orb removal on taskbar is really nice. I will expect some nicer, more creative animation when hovering, clicking instead of just fade in and fade out in windows 7. However be sure to design the new flag as significant and unique as the team can... not to make user confused the flag icon is just another pinned application on the taskbar!!!! Overall, great progress keep it up Microsoft!!!!!!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@Chen, @Janson1 and others: There were a couple of questions about interrupted file copies when a network connection is lost. In Windows 8 Explorer will in fact pick up and continue a copy job when the network connection changes. The copy job will pause and wait for some time before delivering an error that the copy was interrupted. If it finds a new connection, such as when moving from a Wired to Wireless connection it will seamlessly resume. This works when your Windows 8 computer goes into standby mode as well, such as when you close your notebook lid and are on the move. Open the lid again, and your copy resumes (on wireless or wired) where it left off.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Nice evolution of the file-copy UI/UX. I do think that it would be very interesting to put the color choices -- particularly the yellow-for-paused -- in front of a bunch of real users of various sorts, vs. other possible color choices -- such as grey-for-disabled -- and see what sort of responses and behaviors you get. If yellow is Windows' standard color for paused, then it makes sense from that perspective. But having used Windows myself for some time now, I don't have any feel for yellow as being the "paused" color. (And such may be irrelevant to Mac/Linux users you may be trying to lure to Windows.) The yellow color used on the speed-charts depicted above that looks more like a slow-progress warning color to me. Graying the section out as disabled would make sense personally to me, as gray usually indicates (to me) a disabled/suspended state, which is effectively what a file-copy pause is. (Or even maybe just a gray-dulled shade of the active green color, indicating that this file-copy is still healthy, just paused.) Understanding that this is all subjective, etc., etc., etc. But real-user studies, if not already done, could be very useful here if it does turn out that the color-choice significantly affects many users' first-impression understandings of what those colors mean. ("Oh, that's paused," as opposed to "uh-oh, something's really slowing down this copy.") IAC, not something I'll freak out over, but something IMO to consider. :-) Thanks!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Daniel D's comment is true. That is nice if we can resume copy after restart or sleep mode, or shut down.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@mobiletonster, Great point about preserving file-system access. Agreed.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Just as already some people mention. A queuing functionality as Total commander would be a really nice improvement. Nice job so far!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Both changes are great, but i would improve the names collision resolver, instead of clicking on the chebkbox, i would allow the user to click in the image, or some like the w7 names collision resolver that allows you to click that giant button that contains all the info. Saludos!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
That's a very nice upgrade to the Windows Explorer interface. I hope windows can also integrate some new functionality into windows explorer such as mounting image files (e.g. ISO) files directly as drives or at least providing the ability to browse its contents. Those things are usually native on other operating systems and they make the life a whole lot easier.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Liking the look of the improvements, nice to see something so fundemental but oftern overlooked is getting some attention. As others have said though, it would be great to have a queue system implemented. E.g. when using an external hard drive, in this case Drive Letter E: When a number of copy or move operations are initiated to E:, the throughput will slow to an unbearable amount due to the IOs. It would be much better having each operation added to a queue and then to exectute the queue one at a time, it makes for a much better user experience as estimated times can be more effectively calculated.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
While it's nice to be able to observe the process what are you actually doing to speed it up. As an example, I do a lot of photo editing. When I've culled my photos for deletion using ACDSee and hit the delete key the files are deleted much, much faster than when I use Windows Explorer to delete them. Why?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I am now waiting till 2012 to buy a new laptop with Windows 8. I think that It will be the best Windows ever.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
First of all, I'm glad that you guys are addressing this basic yet frustrating issue. Kudos to you! Now, one of my biggest complaints with "copy jobs" is that if I am copying hundreds of files and one of them fails for some reason ("it's in use by another process" or "can't find the file anymore!" etc.) I have to go back, figure out what got copied and what hasn't yet, then sort it out, and re-do the operation starting from where Windows left off. And, this gets even better if multiple nested folders are involved. Anyhow, you said " Lastly, our telemetry shows that 5.61% of copy jobs fail to complete for a variety of different reasons ranging from network interruptions to people just canceling the operation." So, apparently, you are aware of the issue. Are you planning to address this? If so, how? Are you going to skip the problematic files, or are you going to just pause if there is an error and wait for us to decide if we want to resolve it or skip it?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
The single feature I'd love above all others is a tabbed Windows Explorer! Other things: Improved Bulk Renaming - Something like a rename to pattern feature For a normal delete, remove the "Are you sure" prompt, just highlight the undo button, (keep prompt for permanent delete) More status info about file sizes, I like to at a glance know how much space I've got on C: or how big a folder is when I click on it. Or prehaps more importants a "It ain't gonna fit" popup BEFORE it starts copying to my memory stick. Looks good though.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
All of @Dan Swain's suggestions sound really great. Bulk renaming is something that'd be great to implement, and a file size error before copying would be great instead of failing partway through.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@Dan Swain on 24 Aug 2011 1:27 PM If you read www.thewindowsclub.com/windows-8-features-including-usb-30-support-cleaned-copy-experiences then you see your idea is already applied! That’s awesome! Quote from link above: “6) Several dialog boxes have also been removed. Like, Are you sure you want to move this file to the recycle bin? or Are you sure you want to merge these folders, as these are actually quite redundant.”
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@Zalmo - I agree, for some reason when using third party applications to delete files it's almost instant, the same file in explorer and it takes that little bit longer. A fix, or explanation of why this occurs would be nice.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@Dan Swain By the way, all you need to be able to see the new Office like buttons like Undo, Redo is that click on the title bar of Windows Media Player or just open the video with VLC Player. WMP crops top and bottom on the video a bit. lol
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
If this is the future style Windows 8 - I like it!!! http://i.imgur.com/4U7uR.jpg (posted by @josefajardo)
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I agree with Good stuff’s comment: “Any Windows user knows that it's the small changes that make a big difference! THANK YOU!” It reminded me of a small feature I discovered a while back. I have discovered pretty little nice features when using Alt+Tab, and posted about them on this forum.thewindowsclub.com/.../32124-did-you-know-windows.html Its small feature, but it counts. Just press Ctrl and then Alt+Tab and you see the difference. It locks the Alt+Tab Window and it’s pretty useful, when you want to concentrate about which window to switch on. (Windows 8 idea: It would be awesome in Windows 8 we be able to have more functions when in Alt+Tab mode. Functions like Close the program, Maximize, Minimize, like that. I know we can do these from Taskbar, but it would be just great we do these in Alt+Tab mode as well.) I also noticed pressing Ctrl and then Win key+Tab it locks it, and then you can use left/right arrow keys to navigate through windows and just with a mouse click or Enter key, on any window, you can bring that window on front as well. Note that without pressing the Ctrl key, you can’t use the left/right arrow keys. However, in just pressing Alt+Tab you can use left/right arrow keys pretty well! I read it later in Wikipedia too: “Using Windows 7 the additional key combination Alt-Ctrl-Tab brings up the switcher dialog and it remains on screen after all the keys have been released. A user can move through the dialog in any direction using the arrow keys, or Tab through in a linear manner, wrapping at the end of the list back to the begnining. In this mode, the Enter key or a mouse click selects the desired window which gains the focus and the dialog is dismissed; Escape dismisses with no change of focus.”
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@folks worried about comment filtering -- only a very small number of comments (<10) have been rejected as SPAM or offensive by the automated filter (no human interaction). In looking at them, they are indeed worth filtering. Just letting you know that there's no person in the middle of any comments being published and so far the automated system is working as expected.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
whether such an algorithm is implemented by copying: when conflict arises when copying conflict file is placed in the queue, and copying files, not conflict continues ???
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I agree with @GRiNSER on points 15 and 16, previewing files and searching within those files needs to be significantly improved, especially now that the tablet UI is getting access to the file system.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
After using lightroom and picasa for several years. I don't want to deal with copy, replace any more. Having a library and virtual copies will solve my problems with photos. I will try to get rid of file system and use library for my photos, video, music in the future. What about system files? why should I, a user deal with system files. I also like the new comparison windows for replacing. How about music, video, system files? I don't think having all of them listed, showing only a icon will help me a lot. I don't think I will use this feature a lot. But it's nice to have it.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@Hypernova: Yes, the setting is sticky across sessions. So it will be like that the next time you start a new job unless you change it.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
How about when the files happen to be 100% identical and just named the same? Can it not be smart enough to skip the copy operation and not give me a conflict resolution dialog?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
What will happen if i pause a copy task and remove the usb drive? when i plug in the usb drive again, will the copy task continue? or is all gone? would be great to know
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
make the checkboxes as default in explorer. i know a lot who dont use it, because they dont know that this excist, but it makes a lot more easyier.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Three changes I wish to see on win8 1: I want to be able to change the background folder color from white in windows explorer to whatever color I want. Right now I have to use classic mode to be able to it. The white is too bright. 2: tweak UI again would be great. 3: sort by size, date, name and type should be there by default.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Another thing. When it comes to file transfer make it possible to always show details.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@1984 #1's already possible with some tweaking.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Another vote for using CRCs in duplicate checks and moving, which could just be called "verify" for users. An ideal file move from one device to another would verify (or at least OFFER to verify) the moved contents before deleting the original. Even with Teracopy, this requires an additional step of deleting the original after testing a file copy. Thanks for listening.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
...I use Linux. I love Linux. ...That said, this beats Linux 200%. Neither Nautilus nor Dolphin offer anything like this. Then again, neither does Windows yet :P
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
+1 for tab support! Right now the first thing I do when booting is fire up four instances of Explorer and lay them out across my two monitors. Would be much better if I could see multiple panes/tabs in a single instance. I also want a link to the Desktop pinned somewhere on the screen so that I never have to scroll to get it in view.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@AlexSi Awesome! And thanks for your answer. My 2 cents: everyone, they stated clearly that their intention is not ot replace 3rd party tool such as Teracopy. Even the queuing system which I suggested myself is, I think, a little too much in the "too complicated feature" side. CRC, for example, would be nice to have in Properties Dialog, but I think presenting/using it here would be too complicated for a basic file management.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Its fantastic.. i hope there are significant improvements in the Windows explorer as well. I would love to see the tabbed explorer windows. Still this looks very promising. I am so excited to catch this all action live at Anaheim at Build Windows. Would be a great experience. @Sinfosky
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Network file sharing: I've had this scenario pop up several times, so I'll mention it: I connected my laptop to wifi on my local network, and started a file copy from the laptop (e.g. \LAPTOPcUsersfile) to the desktop. Unfortunately I realize that the copy is going to take a long time, so I decided to plug my laptop onto my 1 Gbps ethernet instead to speed up the transfer. Is there any way to

Use both the wifi AND the ethernet to do the transfer in a bridged manner,
Resume the transfer over ethernet automatically, or
Give me a way to pause and quickly resume transfer over the ethernet instead. Are any of these things possible?

Anonymous
August 24, 2011
All this stuff is rellay nice, but I'm not ready to pay again something around $600 for new copy dialog, especially when I bought already Windows 7 with my brand new laptop this summer. I hope, there will be some migration/update program, like we can see it in case of Apple's Mac OS. Let's say, you pay $100 and get Win8 instead of your Win7… Thanks.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Very Nice work guys, looking forward to testing this out. Also what are the tranfer speeds like between like 2 hdd or more?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Nautilus from Gnome do the same thing, but FOR FREE. Shame on you...
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I would be nice to see fixed a lot of features, especially visual defects of current Windows 7. They're mostly reported and scored at www.windows7taskforce.com and it would be still better to get them fixed on the current Windows version, not the next one. But, if its not possible, leave to fix them on the next version.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Nice job guys!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
It would be great to see an improvement in the NTFS file system such that performance does not degrade when large number of files (say over 1000) start populating any given folder. Please add this to your list of future enhancements.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Hi, I am really excited about Windows 8, keep up the good work!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
here are some improvements that are essential! 1.sort folders by SIZE!!!!!!!! i can't stress this enough!!

make it easier to change skins on windows! make the taskbar THINNER! more customization options for powerusers!
support for more filesystems (such as ext2, ext3, and so on....)
A better filesystem for SSDs!
REMOVE the startorb! ...more will come...

Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Great improvements guys, really glad to hear that the copy jobs will complete with warnings presented at the end. As these comments suggest I still think there's some tweaking to do on the dialog UI side of things but you're heading in the right direciton. I'd also like to see Microsoft introduce Tab support in Windows Explorer. It would be an invaluable addition. Personally, I always find myself having multiple explorer windows open and this one feature alone would make things simpler and more efficient.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
As a windows XP user, why can't I see the video? Pathetic.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Finnaly! A good and useful transfer manager! It would also be great if we could "re-transfer" the stuff, in case of failure. For example, you're sending files to an hard drive and stops responding - there could be another button like the "refresh" button from web browsers to start sending the files, again.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I also had a comment mysteriously not appear and I have trouble believing it was considered offensive or spam. Other people have expressed every view I have though so it does not matter. Great blog, eagerly awaiting next post. Edit: Had to post this twice..
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Dear Alex, I like your "conflict resolution". But the biggest problem I have with files on windows is the way windows tools "lie" about my file names! [If the file is named mlab.exe - I want to see the .exe! And little pictures whose meanings are known only to the prgrammer are useless.]
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
A general request for the blog - could you make it so MSFT replies have a different background than normal replies so that we can quickly scan hundreds of comments to find the replies? That would be much nicer than having to parse the same critiques worded 30 different ways before finding the first response.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I aggre Conrado Vardanega. This is a must! www.windows7taskforce.com Separately these are small changes but if most of them would be fixed it will make a huge difference.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Looks great. Can't wait to use it. For the usage scenario in the video, have you considered having an option to enqueue the second copy so that the user doesn't need to manually continue it after the pause?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
The new Conflict resolution screen is so confusing ,, i didn't get it what will happen when u choose to keep source files !!!!!!!!!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
The new Conflict resolution screen is so confusing ,, i didn't get it what will happen when u choose to keep source files !!!!!!!!!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
First of all, a great attempt to solve a common problem and driver better usability into Windows8. The major issue I run into while copying several large files is that you cannot queue the files to be copied. The process is network bound. It would have been good to allow for queuing of the files to be copied. Thanks!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Great features - just a couple of suggestions:

The graph scaling should be the same across all displayed graphs - just using the above example, the 10MB/s at-a-glance looks slower than the 8MB/s.
maybe allow use of sparklines in the "compressed" bar?

Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
How the resolve feature is going to work with text files? I don't see myself copying edited pictures often.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Buy a mac and use a real operating system, leaves this garbage for dead!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
That's a nice graph. It'll certainly give me something pretty to look at while files are operated upon more slowly due to the overhead.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Some of these features are already present in Directory Opus, which is choice file manager
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
How do you deal with a situation where you are copying 100s of files ? While making a choise for each file is welcome, there should be a way to apply a batch logic that is available today.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Would really like to see some file management tools to visually represent files or folder - like a peek view for folders and I like this visually www.windows7taskforce.com/.../54
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
To all those who say "There's no keep both files option in the conflict dialog!". Will there's a tickbox next to each, so obviously you tick both! In fact if you read the dialog up the top it says, "If you select both versions, the copied file will have a number added to its name" Pause should be grey. Red is just stupid. One annoyance I have with the current dlg is when you select a folder and copy it, the source folder is given as it's parent. This gives the impression that you are copying everything in the parent.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Really nice work guys. Love it. I have a question on the thumbnails for images showsn in this conflict screen. Does it read the image and create a thumbnail or just uses thumbnail from cache or from image EXIF? Some image editors do not re-create the thumbnails in the jpeg EXIF section. Instead original thumbnail is left as it is. so if I crop an image and try to copy it to original folder, the thumnail (if read from cache or from Exif)may not show the difference unless it reads JPEG data and show it to user.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Also the columns are the wrong way around. You're viewing them from a source -> destination view. That's wrong. Instead the columns should be "Original" -> "Proposed Change" That's how you think about it when you are making this decision -> "What was it before? What is it after?" I would use this terminology as the main header for the columns with the actual folder underneath. To me this is the BIGGEST mistake in the proposed dialogs.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Hello Windows 8 Team! I agree with the people that comment that the Conflict Resolution dialog is could be improved. My suggestion is to reduce the amount of information that is delivered through text, and add some kind of big, visual icon. If I am going to overwrite a picture, then a big red icon, from the left, source picture, to the right, destination, to-be-overwritten picture would help lots. Or a yellow icon that show the picture is going to be "cloned". I have met so many people that just don't read dialogs, they just press random buttons to make it go away. A big, visual, way of showing the option is needed, because, let me stress it, people DO NOT and they WILL NOT read the dialog.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Hi, First of all, thanks for the improvements. I noticed there are also a lot of valuable enterprise-style suggestions made in this forum (such as skipping the 256 chars limit while copying between servers and restarting the copy) that I also would like to have implemented. I have a suggestion for a new feature with the copy-speed-graph in Figure 3. With this graph you can see what copy is completely using the available WAN connectivity and pause it. Instead of only providing a pause button I would like to suggest a throttle feature. Make it possible to define a bandwidth limit for a certain (long running) copy task. Now we have to resort to the user-un-friendly tool Robocopy on the command prompt and work with the IPG parameter to try to limit the bandwidth. Robocopy must be incorporated in batch-files for the end-users to use. Please remember that while most offices have 100Mb or 1Gb networks, small branch offices often are connected to the main offices with 1Mb internet VPNs. Windows should register the recently used and maximum available bandwidth between several often used network points (PCs, servers and sites) to suggest acceptable values. ICT-departments can than issue a written policy or GPO of not using more than for example 50% of the available bandwidth. And now for something completely different. Well actually,… please read on. I would like to suggest a total new feature: a copy service. How many times do you need to copy complete folders from one server to another? Copy files between servers from Country_A to Country_B? Wouldn’t it be nice if one could start such a (never ending) copy task without a Remote Desktop Connection from any workstation (in Country_C perhaps) and the files directly go between the servers from Country_A to Country_B without passing the network accesspoint of Country_C twice…? Imagine that this copy service would also compress the files while being copied. Kind regards, Johan A contact form can be found at : http://www.vansoest.it
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@Johan, First off: I'm not on the filesystem or copy engine team, but I've been doing Windows development for along time. About your "completely different' idea. We actually built such a feature into the Lan Manager 1.0 product back in the late 1980s. The user experience was provided by the "NET COPY" command and we provided an API (NetFileCopy) to actually perform the operation. I'm not sure why it was eventually removed, but it's no longer in the system.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Make it stable, fast and look at the W7Taskforce reports. Another Thing I need is the ability to drag&drop the windows in the taskbar preview.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I think you should edit the main post to add comments from [MSFT] employees so people stop asking for features that are already implemented but you didn't write about them/clarify them earlier. And a follow up post on the changes that you are and aren't going to make based on feedback from comments, please?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I think you should edit the main post to add comments from [MSFT] employees so people stop asking for features that are already implemented but you didn't write about them/clarify them earlier. And a follow up post on the changes that you are and aren't going to make based on feedback from comments, please?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Hello, -I have a suggestion related to free space check: could you implement so that every copy/move job will check for free space available on destination/target - by taking into account of other pending/in-progress copy/move job(s) too? -Example scenario: I'm copying a folder "A" with size of 1GB onto a drive that have 1.5GB of free space ("copy job #1"). While the copy job #1 still in progress, I begin copying another folder "B" (size: 700MB) onto the same drive ("copy job #2"). The copy would start because there's sufficient space currently available - let's say 1.1GB - as they do in Vista/7. However, soon one of the job would be interrupted because of insufficient space (or maybe both - depending on transfer speed and how many MB left to copy). -Question: could you make Explorer check other pending "copy jobs" whether it/they are targeting the same destination and then calculate the final free space? Maybe you could do "space reservation" as others suggested, like by putting dummy files or some other methods. But the dummy files must be easily recognizable by user - and maybe CHKDSK too - (e.g. "Copy Operation Reservation File - Safe to Delete") so that a 'borked' copy operation wouldn't left the drive full of useless bits. Thanks.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Howdy folks, Me again. First, thanks again to everyone for the feedback and suggestions. It was a super fun day here in Redmond as the team poured through them. We spent a bunch of time in the hallway outside my office today discussing many of them in depth. However as you might quess, there are WAY more comments than we were expecting and we're challenged to keep up! You'll see more responses from us over the next few hours as we catch up. One thing that is really clear is that the file conflict dialog has generated a ton of interest and discussion so we're figuring out how we can share more of the design work and usability testing that went into it. Stay tuned for that. Thank you again and best regards, Alex
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Hi. This looks very nice, copying takes up a long time, and there is right now a mess if you start multiplay copying. However one small feature that is missing (using 3 party software) is COPY FILENAMES, it`s easy whit a small software to add it, but wolud be a small but Appreciate standard possibility Doc
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Dear Microsoft, This has nothing to do with the topic of this post, but I would like to talk about issues regarding the Windows Snap feature. As I've been reading other Windows 8 forums, I've noticed that many have been complaining about the 16:9 issue. Understandingly, Windows Snap should only be available for widescreens, but it doesn't need to specifically be 16:9 . Many believe that 16:10 deserves a chance for this new feature. Although this is a problem stated by many, believe that the statement could have been misinterpeted. Perhaps, as I thought I might have heard, that Windows Snap is available to any resolution above the standard 1365x768 resolution. Most WXGA+ 16:10 monitors are above that resolution (1440x900), so if that's the case, then their shouldn't be MUCH of a problem. If not, then you may want to take consideration into this. Thank you for your time. P.S.-If this not the right time to post a comment like this, then I can wait until the moment comes.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I wonder if you will unify the IE download bar with this as well?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Wow! It’s really exiting to see all the energy people are putting into suggestions and feedback. I’m the Program Manager for the Windows 8 Copy Experience and wanted to answer some questions people raised in their comments: @Code Layer - Yes, we have a user adjustable window height, and a scroll bar is available when necessary. @Hypernova, @SamStephens, @Hendrik Christian (and others) - As we approached the unified copy experience we knew that we had to weigh possible new concepts with the potential for distraction, and we also had to weigh what other applications may wish to do with the API. As such, we prioritized simplicity, user confidence, and ease of 3rd party app consumption over a number of advanced concepts. @Bob, @ghibbins, @Mike Buzzing, @Hugo Noguiera, @Code Layer, @umibozu, @sreesiv (and others) – We don't want users to have to deal with interruptions any more than you do. And transient file handles preventing a copy job is definitely a nuisance. When there's a problem with a file in a copy job, we place that file in an error queue and go on to the next file. When we've done as much as we can and all that is left are files in the error queue, we retry each file in the error queue one more time without prompting the user. After that, we start asking the user for direction with the errors. By following this model, we've found a significant reduction in the number of transient file handles hit 'early' in a copy job requiring user intervention. There are a few cases where we ask the user for direction before we begin the operation (permanent delete, UAC/elevation), and we do that as soon as we can. @Etrigan - We've changed the default setting for prompting users when files are sent to the recycle bin to "off" for fresh Win8 installs. In addition, we made sure that this setting:
can be turned on if a user prefers recycle warnings
has its state retained on upgrade
can be set via group policy
does not block prompting on permanent deletes Additionally, @Nick Vanheer, we automatically merge folders for users. @Robert W- The keyboard accelerators were not shown in the demo or in the screenshots above as the "alt" key had not been pressed. We have and will continue to make the entire experience navigable via the keyboard.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Please look into the file copy overwrite interface and folder merge interface inconsistencies
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Really, that's great. continue like that. WIndows 7 was good, and these things make Windows 8 so much better !
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
You guys really need to get rid of the 256 char limit as well!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@Johannes and of the 16Bit support and 32Bit Version as well, so it would be more secure. !6Bit application could run in Virtaul Machine.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Checkbox looks out of date. hard to get into it with the mouse. (GOMS, Jef Raskin)
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@ Johannes and they should get rid of the 16Bit support in 32Bit Version as well, so it would be more secure. 16Bit application could run in Virtaul Machine.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Re Jon Class MSFT saying: "@Robert W- The keyboard accelerators were not shown in the demo or in the screenshots above as the "alt" key had not been pressed. We have and will continue to make the entire experience navigable via the keyboard." Windows 7's experience is "navigable" using the keyboard - just not very well. Can we please get the Alt+A = "Overwrite everything and stop bothering me with popups" experience back? I really can't imagine a reason why I'd want to individually choose to keep/not keep files in a bulk file copy. It will be overwrite all or cancel 99.999% of the time.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
What telemetry won't tell you is the times people want to UPDATE a folder: copy a bunch of files into another folder and keep incoming files if they are newer (or brand new), but not if they are older than copies already in the target folder. This seems such a common scenario I've never understood why it required a power user utility to accomplish.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I'd like to echo the request to support the "resume from failure" use case. If I'm on a network, or copying from an external device, or even if my battery just gets yanked, it's an insanely useful feature to be able to come back and pick up where I left off. Robocopy can already do this, and I'd bet it was part of the inspiration for improving these core utils, so hopefully that's part of the package. On the off chance I have someone's attention (haha!) - two other relatively small, mundane things that need to be made DCR's:

Notepad needs to have failure recovery and a shred of respect for modern editing UX (things like ctrl+backspace should not delete whole lines)
Paint should be reverted to its pre-7 state. Particularly because image rotation/scaling is broken now. To repro, make a rectangular selection, and rotate it. Notice how the result is weirdly cropped and altered your image? From a higher point of view, Paint was long cited as "the one thing windows does right". Its upgrade to use the Ribbon UI (which I take no issue with!) really messed it up. Paint's feature set was if anything reduced, it gained bugs, and the use of the Ribbon really feels forced. Yep, these three issues have been my sole complaints about Windows for years - copy/paste, notepad losing valuable unsaved data, and most recently, paint being cruddified. Please fix, amazing Windows team!

Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Now you just need to make it que up several copy jobs from the same source or to the same source. starting two seperate copies from the same source or to the same destinations, creates havoc makin the disk run very slow! que up the copies so everything wil go much faster, and you dont have to sit around and wait bvefore you can start the next copy job its just a friendly hint.. you can have it for free
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
It's been suggested above but the reiterate - One copy per device and automatically queue operations on this basis. I've walked into my sister performing 30 odd copy operations on the same device. Would have taken a million years to finish but for a smarter OS it would be a non-issue! :)
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
What about adding an option to copy ACL's so that you don't have to revert back to robocopy?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I was just wondering how you could talk about "incredible news" whereas it has already been there for years for Macintosh, and more years for Debian / Nautilust Desktop. Talking about something new which is by far not new to the competition is like taking the Windows customer for a ride.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Still no facility to set copy behaviour on a per-file basis for multi-file copies? I often find myself copying one directory onto another. If a file already exists, it asks you if you want to over-write or to cancel. If you cancel, it cancels the whole copy. What is needed is the option to not copy this one file, but continue with the others.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Nice improvement. Would be nice to have the list of the files being copied. Being able to append a new job to an already running would be great to. You should take more inspiration from SuperCopier.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
The "choose files" feature can be very annoying if we are copying hudreds of files and we have to choose for each and every file. There must be some better way.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
A suggestion for the delete operation is that it actually deletes it, not just remove the file pointer. That would stop having people with sensitive data the need to get a 3rd party tool on their context menu to actually delete something. A proper delete should not leave any trace of the file on the disk. Or at least an option in the settings for "safe deletion" since there maybe some non power users that want their files to be recovered if they delete by accident. And please remove the annoying "caucllating time remaining" message that occur whenever I copy something big over the network, just start the copy! All that stuff could come second when the actual operation has started. /H
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
How about an option to move a file or folder by drag'n drop from one HDD to another without copying it , just move it .
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I agree with Oleg. It'd be better to choose the files to keep and use a different indication of files already chosen than check boxes. Steven, what happens if there more than just 3 files with identical name, like 10, 20, 100? How will the dialog change?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
a good idea to improve on this area, i've been waiting for this since Vista, but the graphs certainly is not all that useful for end user... think about it, they're only useful for up to 20% of users at most who analyse their transfer speed. I think what people would find useful is download manager like queue list and the dialogue is separated per physical disk - it would help prolong (mechanical) hard disk life. take a good look at 3rd party file copy utility, particularly SuperCopier and most Download managers, and maybe implement this feature into IE download manager.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@Johannes Duschl And how would you imagine that scenario? Keep up the good work guys!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Well, they are really nice improvements for the user experience, but actually I can't understand a real reason why to put the performances graphs on the details section... I mean, the "casual" user probably doesn't care so much about an in-depth view of the used bandwidth during the paste operation... he may not even know what those green and yellow lines means! ;) In the other hand, as an "experienced" user I never had the need to have a detailed vision of what's happening on the transfert speed, I don't even consider it as a tool for detecting potential malfunctions... Summing up, I think that detailed informations and graphs are a good idea, but maybe it's too "geeky" for 99% of users.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Make the the pick a file like in the new ui. you select a file and the file gets an check mark. So you dont need the checkboxes and to choose more files would be easier.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Oh, another thing just came to my mind: When speaking of file operations, will there be a solution of some kind to do a more sophisticated batch rename of several files? For example if I copy a bunch of "DSC0123....jpg" from my camera, I'd like to easily rename them to something like "Italy 2011", and then select a subset of those images and rename them to "Italy 2011 - Rome", with a consistent, increasing number. (And by "consistent", I don't mean that the first file will keep that name, while the 2nd file will be named "something (2)"...)
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Oh, another thing just came to my mind: When speaking of file operations, will there be a solution of some kind to do a more sophisticated batch rename of several files? For example if I copy a bunch of "DSC0123....jpg" from my camera, I'd like to easily rename them to something like "Italy 2011", and then select a subset of those images and rename them to "Italy 2011 - Rome", with a consistent, increasing number. (And by "consistent", I don't mean that the first file will keep that name, while the 2nd file will be named "something (2)"...) Absolutely Raffo, I have had the same exact thought before...
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I agree with Walter, I've needed the same many times: "Essentially backup the file in the folder I am copying into by renaming it and then copy in the file being copied with the original name"
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
First of all, AWESOME job, the new additions are very good. I'm a developer and I thought a lot about this. I hope you read this and think about it. In my opinion these are very important so PLEASE take a minute to read this and if you do, please let me know what you think. The new additions look cool but they lack a few tweaks. These are what Windows lacked over the years and had me use 3rd party software like Teracopy (although it lacks some of these too): -Note: Throughout this feedback I use capital letters like 'A' and 'B' for hard drives or other sources. I shouldn't try to manage all of my copies. The copy jobs should have a little AI implemented in them. There are times that users want to exchange a lot of files and cannot sit in front of their PC and manage their copies. 1- If you have 2 copy jobs from A to A or A to B the jobs should be in a QUEUE and they shouldn't run simultenously. This would boost up the copy process. (this is available in Teracopy). 2- If you have one copy job from A to A or A to B and another one from C to D or C to C, they SHOULD run simultenously because there's no conflict and no seek time problem. 3- The resolution dialog should have a "Details" button that will show more info about the conflict. 4- The resolution dialog should appear BEFORE or AFTER the copy process not DURING the job. Again, I shouldn't sit in front of my PC for every job. Best regards.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
The detailed information on the copy dialog reminds me of the download screen in Steam -- a view that I use quite a bit to understand how the transfer is going on large downloads. I think this will be really helpful. As others have posted, I'm curious what happens in the Choose Files dialog when we're dealing with something other than pictures or when the number of files grows large. If the basic functionality stays the same, I could imagine this becoming a very unwieldy dialog.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
The change looks good so far, but when copying multiple image files (sometimes hundreds), I've come to rely on SyncToy to do the job of deciding for me. It would be nice to have a function built in to (or in addition to) copy/move that works similar to the way Echo does in that application (simplified, without echoing deletions), by automatically replacing older files with newer ones without stopping to ask after the process has started. That way one could start the process and walk away without coming back to find only a handful of files have been copied, and a dialog asking to continue. Some of us know what we want to do from the start. In the meantime, I'll keep using SyncToy as long as it still functions.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Looks good! Just three wishes: 1 - Always show the time remaining (not just in detailed view) 2 - For multiple jobs, a time estimation for all jobs would be nice 3 - A compare button to show if files are equal in the "Choose" dialog would be really great!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Finally!!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I suggest you change the Speed value to 0.0 MB/s for paused transfers. This will help those who are a little color blind and provide more accurate information.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
When you try to open an unknown file the default selection option is to search the web for a software able to open it and below that it's what the users want: open this file with... I think that open file with.. should be selected by default since it's what people do most of the time. Ps: I'm loving the improvements! :D
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Argh, so annoying to see that "more details"/"fewer details" control on the bottom of the panel - means you have to scroll all the way to the bottom just to collapse the detailed view... Painful!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
These UI elements look nice, but to be honest I don't care about any of this. All I want is for copies and file moves to happen in the background quietly without inhibiting other work that I am doing while it copies. Too often big large copies with lots of files bring the UI to a crushing halt. Thats when copies make me sad.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
These UI elements look nice, but to be honest I don't care about any of this. All I want is for copies and file moves to happen in the background quietly without inhibiting other work that I am doing while it copies. Too often big large copies with lots of files bring the UI to a crushing halt. Thats when copies make me sad.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
One of the more annoying things with the current copy is that if you're copying a folder with many files, you don't get told about a collision until Windows comes to copy the file - so if you've gone off for a cup of coffee and come back, you meet the messagebox asking if you want to replace/ignore the file. What would be better is to check for collisions before starting the copy and asking what to do at that point rather than at some arbitrary point in the future.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
@AndrewPepper: Good point. Possible collisions should be detected and reported immediately.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
<<We aren’t aiming to match the feature sets of these add-ons>> And why not? If these tools exits is because you don't make a proper tool, that's all. A file explorer is basic in any desktop environment. We don't want to install tons of ugly application that will slow down the system just to do the basic! Come on, boys, we already pay a lot for your Windows! Make it worth! Keep on with the nice job!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Nice! I remember explaining docking excel sheets to my Uncle and I think he purchased a copy of Win 7 just for that. These small differentiators make a big impact! Awesome work guys!
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Like a lot of others have said queue should be a major priority. This is a major cause of user experience disappointment. Non technical users do not understand that parallel transfers from or to the same device severely impacts performance, sometimes with an order of magnitude decrease.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Also, If I cancel the replace of one file in the middle the whole operation stops. What about an option to continue copying just skip this one file.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
I agree with previous posts that the paused transfer looks like a slow transfer. Perhaps if when paused, you remove the throughput info and put a large pause icon in the center, similar to how many of the internet videos have it now.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Thank you! The file management in Windows was becoming archaic. Really nice to see this is something you are seriously looking at. Teracopy and likes shouldn't need to exist. It is definitely the small things like this that make the biggest differences.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Nice experience. I proposed a similar thing for KDE long ago (lists.kde.org), I wish I would have imlemented it back then
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Any news about the important stuff: .NET Framework, WPF, Silverlight?
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Looks nice. What I want is the ability to choose whether it asks confirmation messages? I want to choose layouts for individual directories that are remembered. Give me choices, and allow me to decide how I want to use the file explorer.Thanks for listening
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
Another customisation - allow me to choose whether move or copy is the default operation. I virtually never want to copy something.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
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Anonymous
August 24, 2011
No way I am going to give up my Total Commander.
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
This looks nice! As far as file copy/paste operations go, one big thing I can think of that would improve the situation a lot is if drag/drop always did the same thing rather than sometimes moving and sometimes copying. I never know what the rules are for when it moves and when it copies. Thus I always either use CTRL+C/CTRL+V or else I right-click and drag which pops up a menu on drop. It would be nice if I could left-click and drag sometimes, but since I never know whether it will copy or move, I can never use the "easy" option. Please fix this and make left-click drag/drop always do the same operation (probably copy would be the right choice but I'm not sure).
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
he new interface for copying is real cool and all, but Windows 98 Me had the same classic styled UI, Xp had the cool Royale interface which everyone digged. And Windows Vista came with Aero and that was simply awesome. I was hoping windows 8 would have a new interface too. =/
Anonymous
August 24, 2011
For huge file copy operations, I almost always dive for rsync. Requests for Windows file copy:

Have some sort of "resume" operation. If it fails, let me try again, instead of bailing on me
For conflict resolution, checksum both files first. If the filename's the same, and the checksum's the same, then don't waste my time.

Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Automatically pause subsequent copy jobs as they are added, resume the next job in the queue when the one in progress finishes by default. Trying to copy multiple files simultaneously makes everything seem extremely slow. A Queued system would go a long way in making the activity efficient and straightforward for users, and the option to resume queued task would preserve that flexibility.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
I see I'm not the only one who thinks grey would make a better transfer color. My initial thoughts reflect what most of the others said; yellow makes me think slow transfer speeds, while grey is inactive or paused.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Real-time real world scenario: Using Windows XP, I copied a large folder (6Gb) containing hundreds of subdirectories onto a network drive. For whatever reason, I received errors of insufficient disk space here and there and about 10% of the files were not copied. Trying to resolve this issue, the only recourse I have is to re-copy the whole directory and hope this time everything is copied correctly. I get warnings asking me if I want to replace a folder or not copy it at all, but there never seems to be an option allowing me to just append files that aren't there. I've experienced this scenario countless times, has this been addressed?
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
How about making those bars a bit more meaningful. The bars should go by the amount of KB copied/moved and not by the time.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
I thought about this and now I am a little disappointed. Here's what I'd like to see. First, the 'choose files' screen. Those tiny checkboxes are very old-fashioned. What I would like to see is (in horizontal orientation and listed for each file) the three Windows 7 style buttons: 'copy and replace', 'don't copy' and 'rename'. Then when you click either of those, the three buttons gray out and start/queue the required operations for that file immediately (perhaps with an option to recall the operation and choose another action). This way there is no lost time while clicking all the buttons as there is no 'continue' button, (just a 'finish' button to close after it's done). At the same time it's clear, powerful, modern, simple and not too far different from Windows 7 or Vista. Second, the consolidated copy screen: it's nice, but there really needs to be a queueing system, which is really easy to do I think. And it would be perfect if there would be intelligent queue management, like queuing everything that is copied to the same slow disk/ network destination, but continuing operations to another one concurrently.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
These are great technical improvements but I think the UX still caters to IT geeks. To be successful in this environment you need to make sure both grandpa and his 5yr old grandchild can get to the same answer when they sit in front of any form factor. MAKE IT SIMPLE. I dont need to be in control of everything... "only the stuff that makes me look good and cool" (Not sure how that applies to copying files...). I am sorry to say that this is what sells in a consumer driven market. You are off to a great start please dont go back to old habits. You get only one shot at this. I love you guys and dont want to see you fall flat on your face!
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
I am not sure what many of you intend to accomplish with file copying, but I can't remember not a single time that I wanted to name a new file "file (1).exe" when there is an older version of the file. In 90% of all cases I want to replace an existing file, in the other 10% I want to backup the old one as "file.exe.old" or ".bak", and save the new at its place. How much sense does it make to have two or more files in one folder, named "file.exe" and "file (1).exe"? If I wanted to have two versions of the same file I'd give them myself a name that is more descriptive, i.e. "file_new.exe" or "file_resized.bmp". Therefore I suggest removing this automatic numbering altogether and make it possible to simply rename the source or target file in the dialog. Then, if I want to make a backup before replacing, I append ".bak" to the target file's name. If I want to keep both files I comfortably rename the source.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
VIP (Very Important Post) @ I agree with Andrew Pepper. One of the more annoying things with the current copy is that if you're copying a folder with many files, you don't get told about a collision until Windows comes to copy the file - so if you've gone off for a cup of coffee and come back, you meet the messagebox asking if you want to replace/ignore the file. What would be better is to check for collisions before starting the copy and asking what to do at that point rather than at some arbitrary point in the future.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
@VIP The team already answered you question (see above) . The conflict resolution dialog will appear only after the copy process has finished.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
If I move the copy dialogue into a corner, all file-related dialogues should then appear in that corner. Please put the option to not overwrite, and to rename them back in. It won't be overwhelming, it will be practical.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
It is wrong. That's just my opinion.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
A bit unrelated, but you could take a look at this: img11.imageshack.us/.../win8concept.png
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Can't understand why some people here are in so desperate need of a queueing mechanism. Is copying files the only thing they do on their PC? :O I vote for automatic queing, that is if two copy operations have the same source and destination device, queue the second copy operation (show it as "queued" with the ability for the user to force the start with a click on the pause/continue button). I am against extra controls, however, that clutter the UI with options that 0.5% of all users will ever need.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
In the video you mention users can pause one job to help speed up another. I don't see this as an ideal scenario. Even if you don't opt for a fully fledged queue as others have requested, how about something in between: a "speed this up" button which would intelligently pause interfering jobs behind the scenes until the prioritized job is done. This has many advantages over expecting the user to use pause. (To avoid cluttering the UI you can have the button pop up only when two jobs, or two interfering jobs, are going on.) Also: how about integrating the "safely remove hardware" command into the new copy center? Filename collisions have always been an easy way to lose valuable data by accident due to bad judgement. I think the overwrite command should move the old file to the recycle bin or some other temp queue.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
In my opinion Conflict Resolution dialog is a monster dialog I would consider always copying files and managing versions of files as part of the file system Maybe using COM structured storage to save every version of a file I don’t remember ever selecting to preserve and older file And I always wasting too much time to understand what action should I take
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Lool , 465 Reply :D
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
In a copy conflict, right now you get notified even if the two files are named the same, and both attributes and file contents are identical. In this case, there should be no notification.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Reading through the comments, another user above named "Nathan" seems to have described my complaints much more clearly: blogs.msdn.com/.../improving-our-file-management-basics-copy-move-rename-and-delete.aspx Please consider fixing those issues - they are my two biggest complaints with Windows 7's current file management functions as well. Thanks for all the hard work, and for keeping a dialog going with this blog! It's great to be able to read about upcoming features!
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Hallelujah! Operating systems have been allowing pause/resume, etc for several decades, so it's nice to see Windows Explorer finally catching up with the basic essentials. This stuff looks great - I might even consider upgrading to Win8 now. I'm so pleased that you've resolved the worst UI horrors in the entirety of Win7, but what about these: Start a big copy, and go to lunch - when you get back you can be sure that it'll have been sitting waiting for an answer to a stupid question ("do you want to copy the file you asked me to copy?") on the second file of 5000. I hope it will now continue to copy as much as it can and leave the conflicts for the user to resolve when they are available. (The video is low res and won't unmute, so I can't tell if this is already fixed) Or select a complex set of files from a folder (say, all the pictures with your dog in), start a copy and have a simple (correctable) problem (e.g. permissions, lack of space on destination volume, or temporary network glitch) cause a copy failure. On XP/V/W7 the copy aborts and usually the selection is lost, so once you've resolved the issue you have to laboriously reselect the files and restart the entire copy, even if the failure was 99% of the way through the job, just to be sure that you get everything you wanted copied. I hope one day we'll be able to just click "Retry" to have another go at any failed files without having to copy everything from scratch. When you drag a file between two folders, it is moved (and you have to hold down ctrl to make it copy it). But when you drag it between two other folders it is copied (and you have to hold down shift to make it move it). So we end up always holding down modifier keys to ensure we get sane behaviour regardless of whether the destination is on the same volume. Why not be consistent and always copy files for a drag and move them for a shift-drag? And a "copy if newer" option so you can just update a folder by dropping everything into it, and having Windows only bother to copy new or updated files, instead of trying to copy and overwrite everything. Sure i can drop to the commandline and robocopy, but I shouldn't have to!
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Hi, Looks like an awesome change! Thanks so much for implementing it! :) Can you also make a setting so that we can default file copy/move dialogs to auto-show the "More Details"..... every single time i have to click it just to see some standard info. Cheers!
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Earlier I made a comment about how Windows treats file copy when you start a copy on WiFi then plug in a network cable. I want to post a clarification that is more accurate. In Windows 8, if you are using a wireless network to copy from a PC or server running an earlier version of Windows and then plug in a wired connection, the copy job will continue using the wireless network. However if you are copying between two Windows 8 machines (server to PC or PC to PC) the updated SMB stack will automatically switch to the faster connection.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
In working to improve copy-paste, i would argue that the windows team fails to realise that the entire file/directory management system is increasingly irrelevant with the way people use their computers/tablets/phones together. Take pictures for instance. I believe that the best way to manage pictures is to keep them within the library of a dedicated software (picasa, iphoto on mac..). From within the app, you can intuitively organise pictures, sync them with your devices, email them, post them on facebook etc. .(on a mac , the user never has to use the file directory to manage his/her pictures). There is of course nothing wrong with improving the copy-paste experience within windows explorer, but if windows 8 truly wants to be a next generation OS, its developers need to draw the attention away from the explorer and focus instead on a better synching/sharing experience.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
I think the people are confused of the video renaming because the first video is not listed in your blog.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Wow. Mac OSX had this for as long as I can remember.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
This is more related to the UI than the file management experience. I have found the border width for the windows (i.e. the /chrome/) to be rather thick in Windows Vista and Windows 7. I always have to go in and modify the settings to reduce the size of the windows' side borders from 4 pixels each to 1, as well as reducing the size of the top title bar for every computer that i touch. I would highly suggest making the default setting such that the windows' chrome is not too thick. It was fun at first with the aero experience, but at first it starts looking annoying since it takes precious screen estate specially on low-res laptop displays.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
As others have mentioned in the blog, it seems that these dialogs don't lend themselves to touch based interactions. Is there a plan to address this?
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
In case when there is not only filename collision, but the file is actually identical (the same size and content) the system should just do not display any dialogs and carry on. This is quite common thing when you copy photos.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Oh and for the files I already have tons of unsorted files on my hard drive I want to find and rename and the bigger hard disk get the harder it is to do this. It's hard to find dupilcate files in other folders it's hard to rename tons of files at once then sort them and It is driving me insane the reason I got tons of files I don't know where they are is because I do a lot of 3d work and I takes tons of my time to sort them so some times I get lazy and just say whatever and throw them on the harddisk anyway ANYthing the computer can do to help me sort this faster automatic with less typing would help save tons of time.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Oh and for the files I already have tons of unsorted files on my hard drive I want to find and rename and the bigger hard disk get the harder it is to do this. It's hard to find dupilcate files in other folders it's hard to rename tons of files at once then sort them and It is driving me insane the reason I got tons of files I don't know where they are is because I do a lot of 3d work and I takes tons of my time to sort them so some times I get lazy and just say whatever and throw them on the harddisk anyway ANYthing the computer can do to help me sort this faster automatic with less typing would help save tons of time.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
The XKCD joke actually makes a good point, which is that it would be good if the file copy dialog let you know that things have suddenly slowed down, and maybe even why (network saturation, hard disk being used to do other tasks). Could do it just through a red status message or something.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
It would be VERY handy if I transfer files to my Desktop and Windows will automatically send to their respective folders. For example, I stick to transfer to a photo, text and music for the Desktop, and the photo will automatically go to the Pictures folder, Documents folder for the text and music to the Music folder! Like a Synchronization with PC Suggestion of Brazil.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Yes yellow as pause is best I think, like ready set go red-yellow-green lights. Grey looks like finished/error. So you arrange your files with navigation pane and drag-and-drop. Isn't it faster and better overview to arrange files with multiple explorer windows like this: jooh.no/.../Windows_7_multiple_small_explorer_windows_file_management.png That's why I like to be able to go up or breadcrumb all the way to the desktop so I can quickly access my computer and other things without the Navigation pane. A bit off topic; I very often miss the feature that Explorer always shows the size of all files in current directory, or the selected file in the details pane. It is the most important information to me, but in Vista and 7 it rarely shows. Explorer rather shows things like name, date taken, rating and tags of a selected file (image). I have to click "Show more details..." and then it takes a lot of time to calculate the total size the selected files. jooh.no/.../Windows_7_explorer_windows_file_sizes.png PS. I keep getting error "*Please enter a comment" when I try to post with Opera 11.50. Trying again with IE9
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
I couldn't agree more with those that suggested to have the ability to reorder each copy and be able to make them copy sequentially. That IMO would make this feature HUGE. Otherwise us 'power users' will end up looking for a 3rd party product to do this. I hope you're listening MS, simple things like this in an OS add up and make the entire OS better.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Its nice to see that microsoft its correcting past errors and improving user experience. How about copy speed???
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Please remove the rectangle dot of focus border in Picture #2 and #3 at pause button (not only button but sometime the other element get that border when focused). I can say it never been changed or removed for more than for 4 releases of Windows and of course it doesn't look nice. It reminds me some old classic shell style. I think the design team is creative and artistic enough to think about it. It's just a small thing but it can tell how much effort that Microsoft tries to put on developing and enhancing every single detail of a new OS.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Will there be an air-drop-like file transfer in windows 8?
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Awesome Improvements, glad to see Microsoft see what's lacking in there system and implementing new/improved functions for the users. Way to go, User Friendly
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Looks pretty good.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Looks pretty good.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
There's a bug in Windows 7 in which a controlled reboot during the copying of a large file leaves you with a file that is the right size and has the right date but has only the first part of the file contents correct. Everything that hadn't been copied by the time of the reboot is zeroed out in the destination file. This is a change from XP, in which the copy process was interrupted by the shutdown and cleaned up the partial file. Is this bug fixed in Windows 8?
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
@Jon Class [MSFT] : Thanks for responding Jon. However I'm not sure I'd call queueing an advanced concept. To meet your stated goals of simplicity and user confidence, queueing is a better story than what is shown in the blog, where multiple copies involving the same devices will do the wrong thing (device contention) without the user manually intervening by pausing jobs. In fact, the non-queueing behaviour forces users to deal with advanced concepts - that their hardware can't do more than one thing at once efficiently. Queueing simplifies the user experience by insulating them from having to understand when copies will cause device contention - they can simply perform all copies they want and Windows deals with it. Which also boosts user confidence - with a queue they know they can simply ask for what they want up front (perform a set of copies), and trust Windows will do it as efficiently as possible. I can't comment on "ease of 3rd party app consumption" without knowing more specifics, other than to say that surely if 3rd party apps are going to be requesting copies too, surely the need to manage those copies so they complete as efficiently as possible is even more important. If adding the ability to manipulate the queue adds too much user facing complexity or internal complexity, then provide queueing that is totally managed by Windows itself, and let people who more flexibility use third party copy managers. But I think you're missing an opportunity if you don't respond to multiple copies causing device contention in some automated fashion. Thanks again.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
@Dennis Flanagan [MSFT], Thanks for clearing that bit about how Windows handles WiFi vs the faster ethernet interface. However, many users have legacy SMBv1 environments on their networks so they do not benefit from this feature. It should switch to the faster interface even on legacy networks. I am sure making it do that is not impossible. I guess it determines which route or connection to use depending on the lowest metric? If the gateway is the same for both WiFi and Ethernet interfaces, if not for paused copies, any new copies started should at least use the faster connection even on SMBv1 networks.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Those are some epic interfaces! A request: on the file copy resolution dialog, can you say "a number will be added to the file on the right" rather than just "a number will be added to the copy"? It doesn't specify which file is the copy, and therefore it's impossible to tell which file will have a number added to it's name. I assume the file on the right is the copy, so maybe you could just say "a number will be added to the name of the file on the right."
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
yo hablo español, pero tratare de decir lo que hace falta en el manejo de la copia de archivos. I think, what missing something here. maybe add an option to put a file transfer in the background. because we do not always want to spend all fast. maybe we have to copy 500 GB or 1TB of information in this regard would not be so important to the speed, but the system remains the most stable to use as like not doing anything. Throw in an optional background to the transfer, that would help us a lot. THANK YOU ...
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
It would be great to understand how such dialogues can be manipulated using touch (your fingers), rather than a mouse. I see the small red cross at the top again, which is sometimes hard to press using touch.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Sorry for my Lenguage, im Italian, (use Bing translate pls) Mancano 18 giorni a Build e devo dire che ho l'amaro in bocca. I developers ( pagano profumatamente) che parteciperanno a Build, riceveranno un Tablet "prototipo" con un ARM Quad COre by Nvidia nome in codice Nvidia Kal-El . Attualmente non esiste alcun prodotto COMMERCIALE in vendita con tale CPu , quindi anche volendo spendere qualcosa in più non sarà possibile prendere in alcun modo questo tablet. Da quando ha cominciato a dilagare la mania dei tablet, ho resistito a qualsiasi impatto contro la concorrenza perché sapevo che stava arrivando un prodotto notevole che donota un decisivo e deciso cambiod i tendenza , quindi piuttosto che favorire il vento di follia fatto di marketing e finti Geek, ho cominciato a conservare i soldi http://twitpic.com/59mucd e adesso il salvadanaio è in fase GOLD http://lockerz.com/s/132946684 , ed avendo conservato queste monente con tanto sudore, non posso sbagliare acquisto . Quindi sapere di non trovare niente prima della RTM di Windows 8, mi lascia perplesso e soprattutto demotivato. NVndia Quad Tech preview www.youtube.com/watch
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
In the copy progress dialogue I would like to be able to right click on one copy task and select - pause all bar this one or even cancel all bar this one. I should then be able to right click a paused copy and select resume this one or resume all. This is similar to tab control behaviour in IE
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Please, please, please, add a checkbox for "Replace all files" - that's the option most users will make use of. It's some heavy pain to wait for the copy-process that will ask me what to do with filename-conflictions - e.g. 10 minutes after starting a copy-job. I don't want to start the job and wait in front of the screen!! What we need is to start a copy-job and explicitly tell it (right from the start) to "Replace all files", whatever conflict it finds or not. Also it would be nice to decide whether multiple copy- or move-jobs will start concurrently or consecutively. Because running multiple copy-jobs concurrently would result in a longer time than running them consecutively (because the hdd would have to work harder and make more access all around the disk).
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Looks really impressive. I wonder what changes will be introduced to .NET framework in order to add file copy to the queue. Also, what if file copying will be initiated from the batch file? Or is it "just" a Windows Explorer feature, not Windows core functionality? Even then - great job!
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Also how about the option to "Skip" a particular file while it is being copied/moved and start moving/copying the next file? (not to be confused with skipping it because of a conflict). That is a quite simple feature.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Great. But may be you should change Window Explorer at all. I can't use it for file operation. I think all people use Total Commander or Far. So that mean that windows explorer is not so good as it can be. Also there is very useful function in Total Commander is File Syncronization. For example I have larg folder with 5 gb of size and I change - copy or add some files. So I can syn this folder with backup device and only changes will be saved. It so easy to do - to compare files not for content but for date and size. Make some options :

Sync by size and date changes ( fast )
Sync by content ( slowly)

Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Looks great, I like this change in Windows 8. Keep up the good work!
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Great job Windows 8 team! One more suggestion from me: please do it possible to open two explorer windows in one click for common operations people do everyday: copy and move. Or explorer can simply provide functionality for extending current "source" window with second "destination" panel. Thanks!
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
I think that people should realize that Windows 8 is pretty much feature complete at this stage and the only changes that MSFT might make based on these comments are tweaks or small changes.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
If there is a copy conflict I don't see any reason why the copy job can't continue with items that aren't in conflict instead of pausing the copy completely waiting for me to answer.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Just want to say Microsoft Rocks!! Just a cool feature could you allow multiple uninstall program management. IE allow selecting multiple programs to uninstall in Program and Features, i think it would be a nice feature.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
There is nothing more annoying when leaving the computer to copy a few thousand file and coming back 10 mins later to see it stopped on number 57 because of a conflict!! Why not make it copy everything it can and only ask about the conflict at the end?
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Oh and another issue: As KB310316 mentions, prior to Vista, permissions used to be preserved when copying or moving items using Explorer on the same volume or even across volumes if certain registry keys were set. But in Vista and later, neither the ForceCopyAclwithFile nor the MoveSecurityAttributes keys have any effect. So essentially, copying permissions using Explorer is broken since Vista and users are forced to use the complex robocopy syntax. This is a must-fix this for Windows 8 so the shell respects both values and copies permissions too.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Control must be done early so the copy can be terminated without further delay. You can still do the copy and run from the control of conflict but the control must be at the start of the copy. So I know that everything works and I'll have no surprises at the end of the copy. VIP (Very Important Post)
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
I click copy and I am prompted to resolve conflicts and can choose to start copying files that do not conflict. No waiting and if there are conflicts in the few moments I know. Simple, Fast and Clean as Windows.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
The new features look great with excellent functionality, but I'm very disappointed with the lack of addressing my number 1 copy process failure issue: While copying a large group of files, any file that is in use or for some unknown reason is deemed 'not able to be copied' causes the entire process to halt. When this happens, you don't have any clues as to where the failure happened or what else wasn't copied. Seems like you could code in a 'ok, continue' dialogue, or even better, just give a report at the end of the process that alerts the user that files x, y, z could not be copied. sa_scg
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
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Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Deleting a large set of files is also a big pain today.
Anonymous
August 25, 2011
Because some people have not read all of the 500+ comments and are asking for the same features repeatedly which MSFT have already clarified in the comments thus far (not in the main article):
Conflicts are all now queued to the end of the copy job. So we finish all the copies that don't have name collisions, and then ask you to resolve the remaining conflicts.
More details" is sticky - once you open it, all your future copy jobs will show more details until you close it.
There is an initial dialog (if you watch the video) that provides three simple options that will apply to all files that have a conflict – “Replace”, “Skip”, and “Choose.
We’ve done some work to let you click anywhere on a file’s icon in this dialog to select the corresponding checkbox. Users can select/deselect the checkbox by clicking the checkbox, the thumbnail, or the size/date text; users can double-click the thumbnail to open the file; and users can right-click to get at file properties / etc.
We now use bold text to draw attention to the newer time and larger file size.
Yellow to be consistent with the established convention in Windows of using yellow for a temporary halted state
Keep both is still available in the detailed dialogue by checking both boxes for a single file. This can be done for all conflicts by using the master checkboxes at the top of the dialogue.
We have a user adjustable window height, and a scroll bar is available when necessary.
When there's a problem with a file in a copy job, we place that file in an error queue and go on to the next file. When we've done as much as we can and all that is left are files in the error queue, we retry each file in the error queue one more time without prompting the user. After that, we start asking the user for direction with the errors. There are a few cases where we ask the user for direction before we begin the operation (permanent delete, UAC/elevation), and we do that as soon as we can.
The setting for delete confirmation is not removed. We've changed the default setting for prompting users when files are sent to the recycle bin to "off" for fresh Win8 installs.
We have and will continue to make the entire experience navigable via the keyboard.
In Windows 8, if you are using a wireless network to copy from a PC or server running an earlier version of Windows and then plug in a wired connection, the copy job will continue using the wireless network. However if you are copying between two Windows 8 machines (server to PC or PC to PC) the updated SMB stack will automatically switch to the faster connection. So please stop asking for the exact same features.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
If you have two copies running, and you pause one, when the one running finishes, will there be an option to allow the paused one to start up again by itself?
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
People often ask the same features because they hope that there is someone who listens. Perhaps because their opinion even if equal to that of others and also their opinion. Sorry.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
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Anonymous
August 26, 2011
If conflict checking is at the end of the copy I do not know if it will be necessary to resolve a conflict and I stay in the loop waiting for a request to hypothetical conflict. This worsens my work and my life.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
Hey folks, we are definitely following along with all the requests for features and have learned a ton from the feedback and suggestions already. We're reading each one and they all definitely impact our plans/thinking. We've pulled together a bunch of interesting stuff to share very soon on the conflict resolution dialog so keep your eyes on this space!
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
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Anonymous
August 26, 2011
What if I am moving files and have file name conflicts? There is another decision to be made - leave or delete the source file. What if I am creating links? How can I filter, say, 340 files out of 2456 conflicts and apply one decision to them all? How can I remove files I already decided what to do with from view? How to undo my decision? The changes are good, good for the gradually established low Windows level. BTW, it is known for decades that the RIGHT way to do file management is a two panel interface. Recurring: can this blog engine be made Opera friendly? Posting from Opera results in a "please add the text" error.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
GRATE WORK! But their is one thing i would change. When you pause a transfer perhaps it should gray out rather than go yellow. Like Ben said way up top, It look's like a slow transfer warning, especially since yellow is used for alerts in windows. E.g. The task bar flashes yellow for notifications, and UAC warnings have a yellow theme. Other than that i love the direction that you guys are heading in. Keep up the good work.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
Is is possible that for copy jobs with lots of files, if I'm on wireless and then I plug in a wired connection my copy could attempt to move to a multi-threaded approach whereby the files are sent over both connections simultaneously? Often the network is the slow part and a server may have a 1 gb connection and my computer may have a 54 mb wireless and a 100 mb wired connection. Additionally, if one connection is dropped, the copy will just continue on the other connection.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
Great work guys! A lot of people have said they don't like yellow for the pause color. I would suggest you use the color to give meaning to the transfer rate (red for slow transfers, yellow for medium speed, green for cruisin') and then use an opacity mask or shader for the pause. Also, in addition to the small pause button, it would be nice if I could pause any of the transfers by clicking on its respective graph. When you do this, a mask pops up with a large pause button displayed. Which you can click on to resume the process. With the resolve collision dialog, which I'm looking forward to be able to use, it would be nice if I could choose to have it automatically add the number like you've done or let me rename a file in the dialog. For the auto-rename I might do it a little differently. I would have a button that said "Auto Rename" that would automatically rename the files from one source if you clicked it above, or for an individual file if you clicked it below. Then I could go through and clarify names if I wanted or keep the auto-rename. And thanks for improving from auto-renaming by adding "copy of" to the lead of a file name, that's always annoying cause it messes with my alphabeticness and thus my sense of calm.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
Great work guys! A lot of people have said they don't like yellow for the pause color. I would suggest you use the color to give meaning to the transfer rate (red for slow transfers, yellow for medium speed, green for cruisin') and then use an opacity mask or shader for the pause. Also, in addition to the small pause button, it would be nice if I could pause any of the transfers by clicking on its respective graph. When you do this, a mask pops up with a large pause button displayed. Which you can click on to resume the process. With the resolve collision dialog, which I'm looking forward to be able to use, it would be nice if I could choose to have it automatically add the number like you've done or let me rename a file in the dialog. For the auto-rename I might do it a little differently. I would have a button that said "Auto Rename" that would automatically rename the files from one source if you clicked it above, or for an individual file if you clicked it below. Then I could go through and clarify names if I wanted or keep the auto-rename. And thanks for improving from auto-renaming by adding "copy of" to the lead of a file name, that's always annoying cause it messes with my alphabeticness and thus my sense of calm.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
DarkUltra 25 Aug 2011 3:29 PM # blogs.msdn.com/.../improving-our-file-management-basics-copy-move-rename-and-delete.aspx To address your OT remark about file details: Installing classic shell (classicshell.sourceforge.net) gives you this information back, as I explained in my previous post (blogs.msdn.com/.../improving-our-file-management-basics-copy-move-rename-and-delete.aspx) but I have requested this feature be returned and hope the MSFT team include this at least as an option in the new Windows Explorer.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
It's great to see improvements in this area, but it's not nearly ambitious enough for a new version of Windows. Personally, I'd like all errors, conflicts and manual inputs to disappear altogether. For instance, I'd like to set once for all the default behavior for name conflicts. I would also like the copy task to survive any kind of incident: network disruptions, power shutdown, BSODs, ... There will still be a few errors left, but the vast majority should disappear with smarter copy tasks that resume automatically on reboot and login. The name conflict handling is still rather poor, you should add more naming schemes. For instance, I do not want ever the most recent file or the file from the source folder to be renamed "x (2)." Instead, I would prefer to have the most recent file (regardless if it's on the source or target folder) to keep its working name at all times, just like happens when you edit a Word document and the previous one gets renamed as ".bak." So a naming scheme where the older files get renamed as "(-2)" or "(previous 2)" would be better. Plus, I don't know about other users, but when you routinely copy hundreds or thousands of files, you don't have time to resolve such conflicts, be it at the start or at the end of the copy task. Usually you want to keep all versions to be safe. And if the file's last modified date is different but the file's content is strictly identical, it should not even be copied or generate a name conflict. The Pause button would probably be useless if the copy task could adapt to CPU usage or SATA/USB bandwidth constraints, but I like it. Add a Rollback button as well and it will be perfect: Investigating and resuming a failed copy or move operation frequently takes longer than the actual copy itself unless you use robocopy. Definitely queue automatically by default simultaneous copy tasks that involve the same drive. These should also survive a computer reboot or other incidents.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
By the way, I am not able to publish any comment from Firefox 6 when I am logged in the MSDN blog page. There is no error whatsoever. Works fine from IE 9. It would also be great if the comments were numbered.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
A checkbox to choose to keep the more recents and/or the biggest would be great ! e.g. : Choose "more recents first" and, if even there is conflicting files again, choose the biggest.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
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Anonymous
August 26, 2011
For deleting files many users I know empty the Recycle Bin after they delete something because of a mistaken belief that files in the recycle bin take up their disk space. To aleviate these fears and modernize the Bin, make it delete files automatically for example every 7 days. I think the Recycle Bin needs some rethinking. I know users who permantly delete files bypassing the Recycle Bin because they do not want the files to be around for ever in the Bin, or because of the space considerations I mentioned above. Its all in their minds of course but psychology of the user is that like that. You should come up with something more clever to counter these fears.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
For deleting files many users I know empty the Recycle Bin after they delete something because of a mistaken belief that files in the recycle bin take up their disk space. To aleviate these fears and modernize the Bin, make it delete files automatically for example every 7 days. I think the Recycle Bin needs some rethinking. I know users who permantly delete files bypassing the Recycle Bin because they do not want the files to be around for ever in the Bin, or because of the space considerations I mentioned above. Its all in their minds of course but psychology of the user is that like that. You should come up with something more clever to counter these fears.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
Thanks for at least looking into making the basics better (the things us techies use all the time). Please speed up file copies across the board. It's well documented and discussed that Windows 7 for some reason has horrible transfer rates between 2 PCs on the same simple network (1 router 2 PCs). I develop software daily using Microsoft technologies, and it just baffles me why even small file copies are so terribly slow. (And yes, I've disabled differential compression).
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
Apologies if this has already been mentioned - I haven't had time to read all of the comments. In Windows XP, you could select multiple files and the status bar at the bottom of the Explorer window would automatically show you the combined file size. Since Vista/7, the user has had to click a "Show more details" link, which I find unnecessary and irritating - it's one of those extra steps that goes against the ethos of making things simpler. Please could you change this back in W8 so that selecting multiple files in Explorer shows the combined file size straight away.
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
@James Whale this is fixed in Windows 8. Look at the last videos and look at the statusbar ;)
Anonymous
August 26, 2011
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Anonymous
August 27, 2011
Currently some third party utilities have the majority of the changes available and have had for years. I guess it is good that they will now be native in the OS, but certainly not leading edge stuff.
Anonymous
August 27, 2011
@ Andre.Ziegler This is only somewhat fixed. Read my post further up for clarification. It lists only the "number of items" and "selected total file size" but not the "size of disk space remaining", as was previously avaliable in XP and avaliable if one installs Classic Shell. blogs.msdn.com/.../improving-our-file-management-basics-copy-move-rename-and-delete.aspx
Anonymous
August 28, 2011
It is a good improvement. But we need the ability to add or remove the files in the 'copy jobs' list while transfer is going on.. It would really save money and time.
Anonymous
August 28, 2011
This looks really nice, however what about the basic problem of initiating many tasks where due to IO latency issues, the total completion time is higher than if you were to wait for each operation to complete before initiating the next. There should be some kind of job queue option. It's a no-brainer and Windows has never had it.
Anonymous
August 28, 2011
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Anonymous
August 28, 2011
"Finally, in addition to these big improvements, we’ve also done a thorough scrub and removed many of the confirmation dialogs that you’ve told us are annoying or feel redundant (i.e. “are you sure you want to move this file to the recycle bin?” or “are you sure you want to merge these folders?”) to create a quieter, less distracting experience" I would leave the ones that can make or break you, like (Are you sure you want to merge these folders?) alone. Having that extra safety net can save your job some day. Plus it could stop a user from doing a stupid user trick. At least make it an option. If you make it an option you can break the different warnings into Group Policy for selection.
Anonymous
August 28, 2011
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Anonymous
August 28, 2011
Providing pause buttons in copy dialog is a first, great step, but we should not stop here. The next requested step to complete this feature:

automatic detection if an existing copy task is slowed down when a new copy task is added; if yes: automatically wait for the current copy task to complete before the new copy task starts (can be overridden again by the user by clicking the pause/play button)
pause button may be understood in 2 ways: either as "pause as long as the user manually continues the task again" or as "pause until there is no other copy task and then automatically continue". Both meanings are sensefull and should be supported

Anonymous
August 28, 2011
Good. This gives you a lot more control.
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
Yes, I like the new W7 file copy features. But please, what is the command shortcut for "New Folder"? This is REALLY needed and I cannot find it documented. I organize files in folders and using the multiple mouse clicks (right click > New > Folder) to create a new folder is a PAIN. So while this may be out-of-scope for this article, I hope your telemetry shows that people need this feature to help with file copy and organization.
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
What about search feature.. the current one, (since vista)..is not very good. I'd like the old i REALLY miss the old Search Companion Also, what happened to SendTo Menu..you can no longer have a hierarchical structure.. WHY? social.msdn.microsoft.com/.../952116de-07b6-493f-a1fc-643cf8ede2e7
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
Oh another thing concerning handling/viewing files... ONE thing that OSX really suprised me with..was the ability to hover the mouse over a folder containing alot of pictures. Now, if you scroll with mousewheel while hovering..the thumb changes. This way you can quickly browse through the images in that folder, without even opening it. very smart i must admit.
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
Does the copy of files start immediately or first when all files to copy/move are counted? In vista it takes a lot of time counting the number of files to copy when there is more than 100.000 before the the actual file copy starts.
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
Dear Steven, I just posted my comments on 'Welcome to Building Windows 8' since it was off topic. It didn't appear there yet, maybe it awaits moderation? Quote below from www.killertechtips.com/.../teracopy-tips “3. Shutdown When Copying Is Over There’s an option in the Teracopy window that automatically shuts down your PC when copying is complete. It’s often overlooked, but it’s pretty helpful when you start copying a large number of files at midnight, leaving your computer on.”
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
MD5, CRC, and SHA1 thing should be offered in all versions of Windows 8 but for Basic and Home Premium user edition-this feature may be disabled by default to keep it clean and enabled by default for advanced user edition like Sever, Professional, Ultimate, or Enterprise. How these things work within the dialog that the post mentioned above? It's the team's business:)))
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
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Anonymous
August 29, 2011
+1 for implementing a queue mechanism like SamStephens mentioned. That is really needed and the reason I always install teracopy.
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
What if your copying lots of files and there's lots of collisions (because they have the same name, etc), you get the this huge windows telling you wich one to choose? I believe there's lots of work being done here, so congratulations :)
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
What's the use of this forum if different opinions and reports are filtered out? I submitted on Mon 29 Aug 2011 16:43 GMT a message carefully written, clear, short, yet precise, it was not posted. Its only "flaw" was to plead AND to show another solution, better in my opinion and probably in most others'. Versailles, Tue 30 Aug 2011 07:41:10 +0200
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
As a related subject of the conflict resolution, looking at the image thumbnails makes me think about the problem of Windows 7 users to find a utility capable of displaying image thumbnails for less "popular" graphic file formats like PDF, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, etc. I'm a designer and those really help, especially when you're browsing an old folder of thing you've worked on a year or more before. Is there a chance that we see a native support for those in Windows 8? (I should remember to thank you guys from trying to make Windows 8 different and better; I've been waiting for that since Windows 98).
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
As many people before me: I very much appreciate what you have done, especially the more detailed Detail-pane is great. However, the thing that always upset me was the missing ability to queue copying tasks. Trying to copy two files to a harddrive at once is just stupid. Thank you for all the changes you presented so far! Windows 8 is going to be great :-)
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
Do windows verify the integrity of the copied files/moved files with crc or md5 or sha or something?
Anonymous
August 29, 2011
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Anonymous
August 29, 2011
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Anonymous
August 30, 2011
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Anonymous
August 30, 2011
won't windows 8 have a tab system for windows explorer? It's a very simple and usefull change
Anonymous
August 30, 2011
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Anonymous
August 30, 2011
Please add an option of file verification with crc or something???
Anonymous
August 30, 2011
I hope to see that UI in Windows 7. Or something like that.
Anonymous
August 30, 2011
Not sure if this is the best place for this comment, but as it involves File Management so I'll give it a go. Is there any plan to change the naming/sorting scheme when using the "Move, but keep both files" option? For example: a folder contains "test.txt" and you attempt to move another "test.txt" into the folder. Currently you'll get: test (2).txt test.txt In my opinion this is incorrect. Windows should either place the newly numbered "test (2).txt" beneath the other since it's technically the second in the series, or, Windows should automatically rename the original file "test (1).txt" which would allow it to sort appropriately. a: test.txt test (2).txt b: test (1).txt test (2).txt Thanks for considering!
Anonymous
August 31, 2011
Several commenters have mentioned the idea of queuing multiple copies so they complete sequentially. I like the idea as well. One thing I do regularly is copy large files from one machine to different folders on a remote machine. Since my wireless is relatively slow, this takes some time and one feature I've wanted is this auto-queue. But I wouldn't make it the default behavior. instead I'd say, let me click a button that says pause and another pause with auto-resume.
Anonymous
August 31, 2011
I've really enjoyed the ease of drag and drop features and I wonder if there are more opportunities to copy and move files that way from programs and browsers.
Anonymous
August 31, 2011
I'll still be using Teracopy unless you add automatic pausing of actions to/from the same source/target.
Anonymous
August 31, 2011
@Here-Here for gawicks >> Please Please display all the copy 'error dialogs' after the copying >> has completed .So I don't have to sit infront of the machine all the time. >Yes! I second this! This would be much nicer to have than the moving throughput charts. Yes, I agree!!
Anonymous
August 31, 2011
This looks great, but one thing that would make Windows 8 even better are the tabs in Windows Explorer, they are simple to use, fast, and you don't have to go to your taskbar every time when you want to switch to another Windows Explorer window. Plus, auto-hide tabs in Windows Explorer would be a blast, it would be both slick and fast at the same time.
Anonymous
August 31, 2011
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Anonymous
August 31, 2011
@Frankofgdc You mean "display all the copy 'error dialogs' BEFORE the copying has started", right? It would also be nice to have a pause and speed-control built in to the copying process.
Anonymous
August 31, 2011
Another splendid improvement in usability would be an interruptable worker-thread for the Explorer filling the Listview-part. It's driving me mad when I click the wrong directory in the Treeview (slow network, DVD or something) and have to wait until Explorer has finished reading then complete directory content. Why doesn't the Explorer cancel this action at the moment, when I click another item in the Treeview?
Anonymous
September 01, 2011
in regards to file verification options I'd use CRC as a default with more thorough ones as optional.

use a premise that someone could be moving 1 million 50KB text files from one computer to another- spanning multiple directories, sub directories, or even all in one directory. How do you adapt the copy/move operations to adjust to these parameters? -having file verification technologies built into Windows may improve antivirus vendor's products if they can use built-in file verification hooks.

Anonymous
September 01, 2011
Feature request: (1) select mutliple files in Windows Explorer, and copy to clipboard (2) when pasting into text field (e.g. Notepad) -- paste them as list of file names
Anonymous
September 02, 2011
Although I do use copy cut paste type copyjobs... I have totally depended on SyncToy since its release to synchronise, copy and rename / restructure folder trees of files from one device to another (e.g. hard drive to USB stick) but also to do the same across the network between desktop and laptop, etc.
Anonymous
September 02, 2011
Hello. I want to add a point that nobody else seems to have mentioned, but which affects large volume operations a lot: The cost of getting the number of files and the cost of calculating the amount of data. Because of the factors that make estimating the time required for the operation so unreliable, it should be considered whether calculating the number of files/amount of data should still be done ahead of time. If done ahead of time, it can happen that the actual copying of files starts several minutes after the user started the copy operation. I would suggest to do these calculations as low priority operations alongside the actual copy process instead to avoid impacting the time required for the complete operation. (As some have already mentioned, copying files, unzipping archives, etc. is or feels several times faster on Mac OS X or Linux, so adding to the general cost of file operations on Windows is not what you want to do.) Avoiding these calculations ahead of time rules out some of the suggested features, like reserving space ahead of time. (But all such features that I have seen listed above seem too specialized to implement them in Windows Explorer anyway.) PS: The large number of comments make it very hard to get an overview over this. Perhaps Steven et al. could create a follow-up blog article where you clearly list each suggested feature (or type of feature) as...

Being considered.
Being off-topic on the topic of the file operations considered. (Perhaps these should be roughly sorted into areas of concern so that the respective MSFT dev teams can pick them up easily, for example the complaints/suggestions about CIFS or NTFS performance.)
Not being considered (because they seem too involved, tricky/complicated, etc., probably have a short explanation of why they are not considered). And the link to that article should probably be edited/put into this blog entry (where everyone can see it more quickly than hidden somewhere in the comments). Kind regards Clemens Anhuth

Anonymous
September 02, 2011
RE: Copying Open/Protected File -- broken UI and must restart ENTIRE copy process. When i try to Copy/Move a file that can not be moved (because it is open or protected or somesuch -- this happens often when I copy my entire User folder)... the copy process could be going on for an hour and then when it runs into the file that is open/protected, i tells me such and then stops the entire process.... Then i have to figure out what to do with that open/protected file, and then restart the ENTIRE copy process all over again. This must be fixed, it's been a problem in every version of Windows i've ever used.
Anonymous
September 02, 2011
Nice, now please fix search on network drives via Windows Explorer, indexing fails on our network, adding a "Search Server" doesn't work for me either, results come across as web results not a list of files and folders. Fixing search on network drives would make Win8 an easy sell here at my job.
Anonymous
September 02, 2011
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Anonymous
September 02, 2011
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Anonymous
September 02, 2011
Nice improvements. Pause/Resume & Duplicate file options. Something like Copywhiz tool for Windows XP./Vista/7 - www.conceptworld.com/Copywhiz
Anonymous
September 04, 2011
I like this new file operation mechanism. It actually helps. :) I just want to mention a far-out suggestion: Decrease the font size of the titlebar text to 9 pt. It's better for me.
Anonymous
September 04, 2011
All these features are a welcome addition and long overdue. As much as I hate to admit it though, the consolidated copy ui and pause functions, have been available on mac's at least since 10.6 . Im hoping the time remaining indicatiors will more accurately reflect the actual times. The replace option with preview could be improved with the ability to display a lager thumbnail or preview when you hover over the thumbnail.
Anonymous
September 04, 2011
I wrote a comment and hit the Post button but I didn't see it anywhere. This is just a test-comment.
Anonymous
September 04, 2011
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Anonymous
September 05, 2011
Sometimes I miss a feature that is paste only new files. Explaining, I have a folder A with 10 files, and an backup copy B. When I put some files on folder A, and paste all folder A to folder B, I misses an option like "Paste only new files". It could be like a diferencial paste, copying only the new files, instead of all the folder. It should be interesting be two options, the usual "Paste all files", and the described above, "Paste only new files" And another thing about Copy/Paste, several times in Windows Seven (even on XP), I cannot cancel a copy that is in progress. It says "Canceling", but nothing happens, the window kind of crash/locks. If you work on that problem should be great.
Anonymous
September 06, 2011
I think I would like to have a option to pause all the copy jobs, then unpause only the most preffered one. And after it finishes unpause all copy jobs. It could be done fully automatically though. By marking a job as preffered one, all the others could pause and then unpause automatically after the preffered job finishes. keep it up ;) LH
Anonymous
September 06, 2011
Could we make sure that we have a "Resume" or "Re-Try" function that takes into account a network interruption? Thing that happens to me all the time is transferring multi-gig files via wifi, and when there is a network interruption, I have to start all over again, even though most of the files are still in place on a networked drive. I would so much like to not have to go to the Network Drive, delete the almost transferred copy and begin again and hope and pray that there isn't an interruption. A "Smart Resume" would be killer ;)
Anonymous
September 07, 2011
Please have a look (again, if you've already did) at Xplorer² file management program. I wish Windows had all functions we see in that fantastic program.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
How can i downloaded this new windows 8.?????
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
There are two features "from Linux" i'd like to have: the first is History for clipboard. But W8 should integrate in history also ink features (for Tablet PCs), such as: handwriting notes copyable as: 1. ink 2. text 3. image 4.stamp!(to have more copies of repetive patterns in one click). The other is not related to "copy" sistem.,.it is multidesktop :)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
As someone that often copies files between Windows and Linux-based systems, there is one feature that would make my life surprisingly easier: case sensitivity in filenames. In Linux, "file.txt" and "File.txt" are two different files, and can exist peacefully in the same folder. I've read that there's a registry key somewhere that can enable this in Windows Vista and Windows 7, but it would be really useful to just have case sensitivity built-in to the Folder Options where we can also choose to display hidden and system files, and to show file extensions for known file types. Just a simple checkbox "enable case sensitive filenames" or something.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
It would be very useful to have a 'Resume copy' order, so on multiple copies, when pausing, Windows will resume a paused copy once another is complete, rather than sit there and wait to manually start it.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Two big issues for me:

Windows should queue copies to/from a device when the device is near max throughput. Otherwise the simultaneous copies take way longer than serial copy. You could add a "queue" button next to the pause which would auto-unpause when the current copy operation is complete and there are no others higher in the queue.
Windows should auto-detect when files are identical and not bother to ask me about those. Why make me "guess" which one is the one I want if they are the same?

Anonymous
September 09, 2011
@Grumpy Wednesday: "I also see this when dragging DVD .iso files over to USB storage using explorer or using Explorer to copy big files to a SMB share. As long as you use the copy/xcopy or a third-party tool, it's fine. However, explorer cannot be trusted to deal properly with multiple gigabytes of data. I'd hoped that Win7 had fixed this behavior (I observed it first in XP) but it hasn't." Good points. The new UI will only encourage large Explorer copy operations too. Maybe a good idea would be to automatically switch to a dedicated tool when preset thresholds are reached (# files, total copy size, source/dest drive types (net, fixed, optical, etc)). At least give the admin an option to switch via registry. Then by configuring SwitchToDedicatedToolForLargeCopyOperations and LargeCopyOperationsToolPath, the admin can force a switch to RichCopy, RoboCopy, TeraCopy for big copy jobs. This might also tie in nicely with this issue: @Encrypting File System Copying "The Microsoft tool called ROBOCOPY.EXE has an /EFSRAW switch that I use all the time to copy/backup EFS-encrypted files to another drive without decrypting the files first. Will the new Win8 copy feature support this by default?" Yes, and again switch could occur automatically via reg value like SwitchToDedicatedToolForEFSCopyOperations. @Andre.Zeigler: "And please improve the Deleting performance. This is a nightmare in Windows. For example, check out several branches, tags from a version control and try to delete the folders. During times time the PC is nearly unusable." Agreed. It is as though secure delete is turned on by default and delete operations are no faster than copy! Could someone from MSFT please comment on why Explorer delete operations are so slow?
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
I would like windows to have a feature which is very essential. This is a program which can copy the names of only the folders, or folders and sub folders and files names within a drive and prouduce it in a word document. suppose i have a 400 movies in a drive. i simply would like to generate a word file or excel file having the names of all these movies.....this application or program if inbuilt will be very useful.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
When you want to copy a file to a folder, using the Edit menu (pressing Alt or F10 in Windows Explorer) if a copy of file exists on a destination folder, Windows doesn't prompt for that. Is that a bug? My friend also tested that and he said: “indeed it doesn't prompt, but creates the file with the suffix "copy" here”
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Everything looks great, and it's a welcomed improvement to the currently workflow. One observation: The word "queue" shows up 82 times before this post... I think you know what must be done! Thanks so much :)
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Users should be given the option to cancel the current file in a job. For example, if one of the files involved in a file operation has a large file size, the user might want to save time by skipping or cancelling the file operation only for that particular file. It would be time consuming to cancel the entire job and restart only with the files he/she needs.
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
I think it can be a good idea to develop a tool bar for the taskbar where to minimize the copy dialog (as windows media player did in some previous versions) with two progress bars:

The current file progresm
The full copy progress.

Anonymous
September 13, 2011
It is essential to make simple file-system updates to a folder from renames, copies, moves actually refresh in the explorer folder view in a timely fashion. To wit, the extremely long running bug that Microsoft has got no traction on: answers.microsoft.com/.../9d1ede23-2666-4951-b3b9-b6c1ce3d1ebf The thread runs to 31pp and over 300 responses, and NO SOLUTION in sight.
Anonymous
September 13, 2011
I'd also like to see the option to 'overwrite older' (and other variants in this style).
Anonymous
September 14, 2011
hehe. is that 'Real time or Windows time'? :)
Anonymous
September 15, 2011
Will you also please change the paths displayed in the dialogs, the windows 7 explorer messes this up big time. When I move d:mystuffpictures to c:mypictures, it tells me "moving from d:mystuff to c:mypictures". When deleting d:mystuffpictures it tells me "deleting from d:mystuff". While technically there is nothing wrong, it is confusing to say the least. I pressed "cancel" more then once because I thought I was deleting my entire disc. I can't recall such issues with previous windows versions (95,98,2k,xp).
Anonymous
September 19, 2011
I think it would be nice if you could throttle the priority of the file copy. Today I was copying a large database backup (5 GB or so) over the network. At the same time I was trying to access a remote desktop session. That session was slowed down and not usable until the file transfer was finished. If I could have lowered the bandwidth that transfer was using, that would have been very useful. Also, the file copy was using 99% of the 100 Mbps connection on my NIC. So, if I could have said, only use 75%, that would have been very nice.
Anonymous
September 19, 2011
Can you please, Windows team, find a way to enable searching into a partition through Windows Search? Overall, I really like Windows Search. But this is a huge deficiency. I had this problem in Windows 7 and, unfortunately, it is still there in Windows 8 Developer Preview. Thanks.
Anonymous
September 23, 2011
I can not wait until the copy paste action of Windows 8 are available, I want these features now! So my tip for you is to take a close look at www.clicktoapp.com This copy-paste tool connects your computer to local applications but also to webpages like facebook or flickr or wikipedia. It cool, if your want to know s.th. on wikipedia, youst copy your search-term and pick the Clickto-Satellite "Wikipedia". You'll get the information instantly on your screen, shown by clickto. Just take a look at this really smart innovation and try it on your own...
Anonymous
September 25, 2011
W-O-W!!! Great changes. But what about fixing this: you are copying stuff and some error occurs in one of the files and the whole copying stops. I then have to exclude that file and select all of them and then again start copying them. Won't it be better if you first copied everything and then reported the user of all the errors in your 'consolidated' way.
Anonymous
September 30, 2011
It would be nice if you could lock a folder with a password in addition to encrypted folder option already built in windows. Thanks, keep up the great work.
Anonymous
October 13, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
October 13, 2011
Oops, I wondered why nobody had commented...then I realised I had javascript disabled...time to read what other people said and see what else is mentioned about queuing :)
Anonymous
October 13, 2011
windows has poor copy management system .the coping speed of files are faster for large sized file and slower for small sized files i have given screenshots to describe this www.mediafire.com (bhilare_kaustubha@rediffmail.com)
Anonymous
October 14, 2011
There should be a functionality in Pictures viewer letting you see .tga and .gif files. You can't believe how annoying is this.
Anonymous
October 17, 2011
For some reason, I missed this back in August. Glad it was linked in the articles about the Task Manager updates. As far as I can tell, there's still one major feature missing: the ability to rename a file during the copy. I still use XCOPY a lot, this being one major reason (the other major reasons being that it automatically removes read-only attributes when copying from a CD or DVD, and I can type faster than I can navigate screens). That said, I definitely see some benefit of the new displays.

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Improving our file management basics: copy, move, rename, and delete

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