Special Folders Browser

When using the Environment.SpecialFolder enumeration I often spend a few extra moments checking what path a particular SpecialFolder constant refers to on my computer. Since it can be different from machine to machine and user to user it can help to quickly identify where the special folders point to. I got tired of writing the same boilerplate code over and over again so I quickly wrote the Special Folders Browser.

Some useful features:

  • Clearly displays the current path that each special folder represents.
  • “Open in Explorer” button to jump to the specified path in Windows Explorer.
  • “Copy C++/C# Code” buttons which copy the necessary code to the clipboard to save you some typing.

Here are some handy shortcuts:

  • Double click to open folder in Windows Explorer
  • Alt+E for “Open in Explorer”
  • Alt+C for “Copy C++ Code”
  • Alt+O for “Copy C# Code”

This tool was compiled for the .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2. Oh, and it uses reflection so the enumeration constants are not hardcoded just in case the list changes between now and the RTM.

Download it here. In an upcoming post I'll be talking about language choice and why I wrote this tool in C#!

 © 2005 Kenny Kerr

1 Comment

  • It worked. I even learned from it that among the folders that Windows Explorer displays with localized names, less than half of those folders really have localized names. Most of them have real names in US-English but Windows Explorer localizes them both in the left-hand panel (tree view) and right-hand panel (contents of current folder). The console command DIR agreed with your program's display.



    Hmm, maybe I should see which version of a folder name is found by the puppy dog searcher.



    My Virtual Machines, My Webs, My Visual Studio Projects (oops no My, oh my), and My Videos and My Vide and Video (three different folders with different katakana names) aren't special folders. My my, I wonder where they all came from.

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