Solved Is there a way to change what shows under the "length" column?

I'm running 21H2 22000.795 home and have a problem with the view for length of time for song files. It shows the length in six digits 00:00:00. I don't think I have any music files that are over an hour long. When I open a folder containing music files the default is one-half page which shows all song files as 00:0... Of course I can adjust the size of that column to show the entire six digits, but that's very annoying to have to do every time a new folder containing song files is opened. I need a way to show the minutes and seconds in the default view.

Is there a way to either change what shows under the "length" column so I only see the minutes and seconds and not hours, or to change the default view when a new folder containing music files is opened so I see all six digits and not just the first three in that column? MS just introduced this problem with a recent update. They didn't use to show hours, minutes and seconds for the length of mp3s.

A right click on the "length" heading has an option to "size column to fit" or "size all columns to fit". Either option fixes the view problem, but it's only for the folder you're working in. Open a new folder and the same old view of only the first three digits, 00:0... are showing. So again you're having to change the view in every folder. Does anyone have a way to fix this? Thanks.

Also, there is an arrow by "length" heading that shows a box for Short (1-5 minutes) and Medium (5-30 minutes). What are those boxes for? I tried clicking in the boxes and sure enough by clicking the first box all songs longer than five minutes disappears from the file list. The other box eliminates any song shorter than five minutes from the view. Who needed such a choice? Seems a total waste. You can just sort the length columns and all the shorter songs are separated from the longer songs on the list when the times are put in order. With only those two choices available they seem to be acknowledging that not many songs are longer then 30 minutes so why show "hours" under the length column in the first place. Frustration building...

Are you talking about information that is displayed in Windows Explorer, or some other program?

Yes, the explorer windows

larrydonline said:

Yes, the explorer windows

Click to expand...

Wow, Edwin. That actually worked. Thanks a lot for sharing that info. I didn't think it would save that much of the folder view as the template, but it did.

You can also set the default Details view column widths globally using WinSetView.

I took a look at it and it's way more complicated to figure out than I have patience and time for and maybe smarts too. Thanks for the suggestion.

No problem. It looks like you're all sorted, but If you ever do want more control over the column widths, just start by following the steps in the quick start guide. And trial and error is just fine, because WinSetView remembers your settings from one session to the next.