I dislike “grouping” of file names in a folder, and for several years since I got this computer (a Dell desktop running Windows 7) have never used them. However, this afternoon, Windows has suddenly decided that I really wanted grouping in my folders, and has started to display files in groups.
I tried the help function on the computer with no results. I then went on the Internet to search on “grouping” of files in a directory, and found some nice simple ways to remove grouping. However, none of these work in turning off groups. One is supposed to open a folder, and click on the View icon, which brings up a ton of ways that grouping can be done. However, the information I got on the Internet stated that one of these options is “None”, which is what I am trying to invoke. Unfortunately this option “None” is not included in the list of available options on my computer, which makes this method pretty useless.
Any ideas on how I can get rid of this “grouping” nonsense? I suppose a “System Restore” from several days ago might do it, but I’d rather not do this except as a last resort.
Any help on the would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Are you sure that it’s actually “grouping” them and that you just aren’t using a different view, such as, the Content view? You mentioned that the “none” option wasn’t available to un-group the files… the “none” option will only be available if groupings are enabled. Since you don’t see a none option, it would indicate that something else is the issue. I would look at the images here Changing Views | Customizing Windows Explorer in Windows 7 | InformIT to see if your view resembles the “Content View” and then use the slider near the top right of the window to try changing it to “Details” or something else more desirable.
No access to a Windows 7 box at the moment, but playing with Explorer in Windows 10 shows me that an active selection in the “group by” menu is a toggle: if the menu shows you’re grouping by name, selecting “Name” again turns grouping off. (In other words, there is no “none” option; selecting the same option that’s selected at the moment is the equivalent of “none”.)
YMMV, since this is Windows 10 and I don’t use Win 7 enough to remember how different the two versions of Windows Explorer are.
ETA: Googling tells me that Windows 7 definitely has a “none” setting if the files are currently grouped, so my advice is probably not applicable. biometricks’ post seems to be most on-point.
Apparently I’m not very observant. Windows 10 works just like biometricks describes for Windows 7, so if you’re seeing file grouping, there should be a way to select “none”. If “none” isn’t an option for grouping, what you’re seeing isn’t grouping (in the conventional Windows Explorer sense).
You guys (or gals) were right. They hadn’t been grouped - they were ordered is some weird order that I can’t figure out. Didn’t spend much time on this, however. Found that showing “details”, and them immediately showing them as list (in the view menu) lists got me back to what I was looking for. Thanks to all for your help.