Solved Libraries

[Britton30]

Explained below.
Clarify what you mean, Documents is a folder, not an app.

Powell, I think you read too much into those Libraries. They are just a colection of pointers (like an index) to folders. A standard system would come with e.g. a Pictures Library pointing to the folders of My Pictures and to Public Pictures.

If you store something to the Pictures library, that is the same as storing it to My Pictures which is the default folder. If, however, you have additional folders in the library or if you want to store to the Public Pictures, you have to select those specificly.

The default folder has a checkmark in Library Properties as you can see in my picture. What you can also see it that I have another My Pictures folder in a seperate data Partition D.

Libraries are very convenient when you have your data spread all over the place in seperate folders. They serve as common repository.

Libraries is a junction point or shortcut to a folder, file, or groups thereof, whatever you add to them. They contain nothing at all but point to thing which do.

 

[whs]

Same thing as in Vista. Just open the folder (e.g. My Documents) and not the library. Again there is nothing different than before. The libraries are just a higher level facility to group folders in different (or same) location(s) together.

 

[kado897]

No. Libraries sit on top of the file system and act as a collection of folders as described above. You can still use the file system as you did in XP. if you just use my Computer instead of the default starting point and you have everything you had in XP.

 

[Britton30]

In my system this is what any open folder looks like. I've doen nothing special to see the pane on the left, it's default. When I click on the items under "Libraries", that folder opens. The same items appear when clicking Start, they are on the right at the top.

 

[SundRance]

Navigation in Windows 7 is actually easer than ever. If you use the address bar and type a path, ie:
'C:\Users\Your User Name\Documents' and press ENTER Exlorer browses to that location. Typed paths STAY in the address drop down menu, and are often available in browse boxes when saving files. The only real problem I have with libraries is they take up so much space in the navigation pane. Usually I collapse them and they stay collapsed (until something comes along to expand them ...).

They do really come in handy when using multiple accounts in Windows. Your USER NAME documents are visible along with the PUBLIC documents when using libraries. Same for pictures, vids, etc ...

If you don't want or need the feature find a tutorial you can follow and remove libraries. It is simple enough to do, but like I said, they really can be a handy feature. On one of my machines I use only a single account, and libraries don't help much, but on my desktop I share the entire Public user and libraries are a nice feature on that machine.

Windows 7 is NOT Windows Vista. Learn to use the new tools and I think you'll come to appreciate some of the improvements, and will certainly appreciate how stable and secure the OS is. I can't for the life of me understand Microsoft's whole love affair with the ribbon thing, and was forced to hack Wordpad to get it back into something useful, but I am getting used to the navigation and Explorer changes and find the OS an improvement over anything to date.

Good luck and I hope you find a work flow.
Rªnce

 

[pincushion]

Hi Powell

I should think that your questions have been answered by the other more knowledgable users on this forum so I won't add anything since I don't use Libraries. I believe the Tutorials here should cover any gaps from what has been said. For large amounts of diverse information spread around different media then I can see the benefits but not for myself. Personally I would like not to see Favorites, Homegroup or Network on the Windows Explorer pane as well as Libraries for a stand-alone computer. I believe Libraries work best with Indexing and Search enabled, both of which I disable.

Hope you manage to sort it all out.

 

[kado897]

Hi Powell

I should think that your questions have been answered by the other more knowledgable users on this forum so I won't add anything since I don't use Libraries. I believe the Tutorials here should cover any gaps from what has been said. For large amounts of diverse information spread around different media then I can see the benefits but not for myself. Personally I would like not to see Favorites, Homegroup or Network on the Windows Explorer pane as well as Libraries for a stand-alone computer. I believe Libraries work best with Indexing and Search enabled, both of which I disable.

Hope you manage to sort it all out.

A folder needs to be indexed to include it in a library and it will set up indexing if it is not already running but you can stop indexing afterwards and, although it complains a bit, it will still work.

 

[Powell41]

Good Evening Forum Folks:

The problem with Libraries has been resolved. My confusion and irritation was caused by the fact that all the Libraries were hidden. Nothing was showing up in them even when I tried to get them using the Show Default Directories button. It is only when I came across the Tutorial by Shawn (Brink) that I even realized these Directories could be hidden. They still didn't show up when I tried to install the downloadable file which was supposed to restore them. It required entering the coding shown in the tutorial into the Command Prompt to restore them. Once that was done and the Directories appeared the whole Libraries function became clear.

I want to thank all of you who took the time and effort to reply. It must have been just as frustrating for you all who could seen your Library Directories, or Folders, or whatever they're called and not understand what my problem was.

 

[Britton30]

Ah ha. No wonder we we confused, glad you have it sorted out!

 

[kado897]

Good Evening Forum Folks:

The problem with Libraries has been resolved. My confusion and irritation was caused by the fact that all the Libraries were hidden. Nothing was showing up in them even when I tried to get them using the Show Default Directories button. It is only when I came across the Tutorial by Shawn (Brink) that I even realized these Directories could be hidden. They still didn't show up when I tried to install the downloadable file which was supposed to restore them. It required entering the coding shown in the tutorial into the Command Prompt to restore them. Once that was done and the Directories appeared the whole Libraries function became clear.

I want to thank all of you who took the time and effort to reply. It must have been just as frustrating for you all who could seen your Library Directories, or Folders, or whatever they're called and not understand what my problem was.

Glad you have it sorted out. I wonder why they were hidden, by default they are not?