The Windows Explorer is the thing you use to browse around the folders and files on your Windows computer. You may not even know it, but the Explorer has a lot of options that you can change. Under Windows XP there are some pretty cool things you can do to make it easier to browse folders of MP3 files, such as those you may download from Voices For Christ.

If you have Windows XP, you don’t need any extra software to take advantage of this tip. Just follow these simple instructions, and you can always undo it and go back to the defaults if you don’t like the change.

Step One

Here is a snapshot of how the default Windows Explorer may show a folder full of MP3 files. This is a directory of messages by brother William MacDonald. The default on your computer may look a little different. The icon shown with each MP3 file is for the registered MP3 player program. On my computer this changes depending on whether I last ran the Yahoo! Music Engine, or ITunes, or some other thing I may have been experimenting with.

Step Two

Well that last one really wasn’t a step, now was it? Just noticing what you already have. Windows explorer has several different modes of viewing files. The one we want to use is called “Details”. You can change the view mode by using the menu across the top of the Windows Explorer. Just select View and then select Details. After you do this, your view of the same files will look something like this.

Step Three

Now that we have details, we can choose which details are most interesting. At Voices For Christ we have tried to be somewhat descriptive with our filenames, but there is much more complete information about each file that will help you find what you are looking for. In order to select the more interesting details, use the menu across the top of the Windows Explorer again and select View then Choose Details. You get a little pop-up menu that looks like the one below.

As in the screen shot, you can select Title, Artist, Year, and Duration. These fields will almost always have values filled in for files you get from Voices For Christ. While here, you might want to deselect the Date Modified and Size details fields. They aren’t as useful as the others. Or you can keep them and change the order. Once a particular detail name is highlighted you can use the buttons labelled “Move Up” and “Move Down” on the right of the pop-up menu to change the default order of the columns.
Get it just how you like to see it. In this example, I have chosen to keep the file name visible but to move it down the list after the title and speaker information.

Step Four

Well this one isn’t really a step either. But I needed someplace to put a snapshot of the finished result to entice you into trying out this tip. Here is the way my folder full of William MacDonald messages looks after choosing the details mentioned in Step 3 and changing the order a little.

Much more informative! You can clearly see the titles, the speaker name, the year the message was given (when we know it) and the duration of the message.

We hope you Windows XP users will try this tip out and have an easier time browing your folders of MP3 files.