How to easily change the "Type" description of file types in Explorer

G'day everyone

After doing some Googling I discovered that it is impossible in Windows 7 to sort files by file extension -- one can only sort by file type, which depends on the file type description. This means that if I want to sort by file type, I need to rename the type descriptions of all my most commonly used files.

In addition, the only place where I can see a file's extension is in the file name itself, and not e.g. in the status bar when a file is selected. In Windows 7, the file type description (not the file extension) is also in the status bar.

In other words, in Windows 7 all files labelled e.g. "Opera Web Document" are sorted as if they have the same file type, regardless of whether they are .html, .htm, .mht, etc. And if I select a file and look at the status bar, the file's type is indicated as "Opera Web Document", without any clue as to the file extension. The only way for me to see the file extension is to increase the width of the "Name" column until the end of the file name becomes visible.

So... my question is:

Is there an easy way to simply rename the file type descriptions? I see that my JPG files are named "JPG File" and my PNG files are named "PNG" file, which is extremely useful. What I now want is to rename my HTML, HTM and MHT files' file types to "HTML File", "HTM File" and "MHT File", and the same would apply to all file types I often use (e.g. DOC, DOCX, XLS, XML, TXT, etc).

Thanks
Samuel

leuce said:

Is there an easy way to simply rename the file type descriptions?

I've discovered Default Programs Editor but that only does one file at a time, using a very long, cumbersome route. But... it works. Something quicker with the possibility to automate would be nice, though.

The issue is that once you installed Opera, it registered that program as the program to open all webpage related files, which is now reflected in explorer. You could try disassociating those file types with Opera to see if that works:

File Extension Type - Unassociate