Folder Pane


The Folder Pane lists the contents of the Current Folder, and shows a preview and more details about the currently-selected folder or file.

  • In the Standard Layout, the Folder Pane is below the Folder Columns and Navigation Pane. 
  • In the Columns Layout, the Current Folder Pane is the rightmost folder column, so that's the only place you can select folders or files.
  • You can refresh the item display by pressing F5, Ctrl+R, or select "Refresh everything" in the menu that pops up when you click the button in the Drives Group. (but program should auto-refresh - see Troubleshooting below)
  • You can choose from a number of different File Views, allowing you to hide some columns, show others, change the order and widths of columns, how icons or thumbnails are displayed, which columns are hidden when the Browser isn't wide enough to show them all, and so on. You can create as many File Views as you wish using the File View Designer.


Folder Pane Toolbar

Sort files: Click to get a list of sorting options. This button duplicates the action of the Sorting Columns arrows (see below), but it's needed for the Grid View, which doesn't have any columns.
Change file view: Click to be presented with a variety of File Views. OneCommander remembers which File View Design you select for each folder. OneCommander comes with a variety of File Views, and you can edit any of them or add to the list using the File View Designer. 
Creates new file/folder/note from template
Clipboard paste: The equivalent of Ctrl+V. If the Clipboard contains text, OneCommander creates a text file with the default name "<date> <time>.txt", if there is a bitmap on clipboard, a png file will be created (png because it is lossless, unlike jpg). If there is a path to a video on the web, it will prompt to download the video. 


Main item display

The various properties of items are show in a series of columns which you can select using the File View Designer. In addition to the ones familiar to Windows, there's a column showing in "hot/cold" color-coded form the age of the item, i.e. the time that has elapsed since the item was last modified. You can adjust the colors in Settings > General. There's a more complete explanation of how the age display works there, under Item Properties: click the button at top right of the pane.


Long file names

Long file names are often too long to be seen fully in the Name column. They can be seen in full:

  • In the Details Pane.
  • By pressing F7, which toggles the other columns on and off.


Sorting files

Either:

  • Click the Sort files button

Or:

  • Each column has a pair of arrows at the top which sort the items on display in each of two directions (e.g. A-Z or Z-A). Hover the cursor over the arrows to see what they do. The arrow in bold shows the current sort order.

OneCommander remembers the sort order for each folder, which is very handy because different folders may well have different sorting requirements. Further information about sorting:

  • For size, only files are sorted. Sorting files by size only works if the "Folders on Top" toggle (see below) is set so that folders are listed at the top. (See FAQ below)
  • If you prefer folders always to be sorted by name, go to Settings > View and check "Sort folders by name always". With this checked, only files are affected by the sort order selected by clicking a sort arrow.
  • You can change the default sort order for columns at Settings > View.
  • Folders on Top toggle: Press to sort files and folders so that folders are either listed first, or listed with files in the order specified by the sort arrows for properties like file name, type, date etc. This setting is remembered for each folder. You can set the default for this behavior at Settings > View or set it on the root of the drive (learn how file view is inherited in File Views section)


  • FAQ: 
  • Why is there no name/title of the column (ex: "Date")
  • A: some languages have really long words for name/type/date/size and it will be a visual clutter. You already know "1 MB" is a size so there is no need to show redundant information

  • Why can't I sort folders by size

A: Program can only sort but the actual properties that are stored on the disk. Folders don't have size property but OC calculates them manually


Metadata display

Some metadata is shown to the right of the file name if the Browser is wide enough. For example, for image files the size of the image in pixels is shown:

Another example: the metadata for document files shows the number of pages in the document (e.g.; these files are on OneDrive, and the icon shows that they are always on the local machine and synced with the server):



In the Thumbs+Details View (click the button on the Folder Pane Toolbar — see above) the metadata is shown in the second line for each file:


You can get OneCommander to show text excerpts from a variety of file types specified in Settings > Preview:


Filtering folders and files

Start typing characters in the path name you are looking for:

  • The first key you press shows only items beginning with that letter
  • If you type two or more letters, all items in the Current Folder Pane containing that text will be shown
  • Displaying a particular file type: Begin typing with a period (.) For example, ".pdf" will display only .pdf files.
  • Cancel the filter by pressing Esc on your keyboard, or clicking the icon to the right of the filter:


To create a new folder, file, or note in the Folder Pane


Method 1: Click on (+) icon in the Folder Pane Toolbar:



Method 2: From context menu - Right-click on the header for the folder pane and select from the list (File, Folder, or Note) that appears.




Note/To Do

You can add as many Notes or ToDo items as you like to the files in the Current Folder Pane. Hit Alt+N or click in the Folder Pane Toolbar menu, and a small editing window pops up. Up to four lines of text appear in the Name column, but the full text can be seen in the File Preview below:

Notes/ToDos can be edited by double-clicking on the Note/ToDo, and deleted in the same way as any other file. They are simple text files with the extension ".2do".
You can mark Notes/ToDos as completed by clicking in the Note/ToDo's checkbox:. This also changes the file extension to ".2dx".


Creating a background image for a Folder Pane

If OneCommander finds one of the following files in any folder:
cover.jpg, folder.jpg, front.jpg, background.jpg, poster.jpg 
it will show that image as a background for that folder. An example might be an album cover image. 

To enable/disable this feature, click "Show folder background image" in Settings > View.


Note: new versions show folder cover image only if the file is visible, for the performance reason. To enable old behavior edit OneCommanderV3.json and change this line to "True"

"SearchHiddenBackgroundImage": "False",



Troubleshooting

Files list not auto refreshing:

OC uses Windows native way of monitoring for file changes but in some places this won't work: on some simulated filesystems that mount a cloud or a ftp folder as new drive/folder, or encrypted file containers. (Raidrive is known to have issues).