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Question

Win 10 Quick access showing strange behavior

Feb 23, 2016 6:09AM PST

Hello,

Although some people hate it, I've learned to like the "Quick Access" feature of Win 10. Recently it has shown strange behavior, however. Instead of listing my "frequent folders" in a list within a pane at the top of the window and "recent files" in a pane at the bottom at the bottom of the window (in a separate pane), both "frequent folders" and "recent files" show up on the same detail list (within a single pane), always sorted by name.

That is, the entries are all sorted by name instead of (recent) date, as I would like. (I want the most recent files to be at the top of the list… just like Quick Access was “out of the box”.
Just for the record, I’ve tried “Restore defaults” on the Quick Access folder… to no avail.

I’ll paste a couple of screenshots now and will follow later with a screenshot of operating system, model number, and any other specs afterwards.

Here (in a screenshot I pulled from the web) is how Quick access should look:


Instead, this is how it DOES look:


Lastly, here is my system information for reference:


I don't recall doing anything to my system recently... not even installing any new software. I'm going crazy trying to get Quick access to look normal again.

Any ideas?

Update: When I try to add images to my post, they seem to get lost (at least when I click "preview post"). I'll go ahead and make the post, hoping the images will show up there. If not, I'll try inserting the images again.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
That's how it works for "Quick Access"
Feb 23, 2016 9:05AM PST
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Thanks... But your link has no "troubleshooting" option
Feb 23, 2016 6:41PM PST

Thanks for your reply, R. Proffitt. Yes, I already had noticed (and probably should have mentioned) that "real folders" sort OK, with the folders always being listed before the files, as they should be.

I took a look at the "groovypost" link. While informative, it does not mention how to troubleshoot Quick Access to get it functioning "normally" again, with the . That's what I am after. There is nothing in the article that suggests how to troubleshoot Quick Access when it begins misbehaving.

One other thing I probably should mention is that on the far right of the window, either the "preview pane" or the "details pane" now shows up. I don't want to see either one (as was the case when Quick Access was functioning properly.)

If I go to the menu bar and click "view", on the left side of the menu bar in the "Panes" area, there is the option to view either the "preview pane" or the "details pane", but there is no option to turn them off completely.

Just for the record, I did go into the "options" menu of the File Explorer and tried toggling off/on (by checking and unchecking the select boxes) both the options for "Show recently used files in Quick access" and "Show frequently used folders in Quick access". Doing so seems to have no effect on getting Quick Access back to looking "Normal". I tried several combinations of toggling on/off (such as rebooting computer after each change) but nothing works.

By "normal", I mean back to showing "frequently used folders" in the top pane of Quick Access and "recently used files" in the bottom pane... with no "preview pane" or "details pane" appearing on the far right.

There must be a simple solution out there somewhere...

Regards,

cbi

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I never found a fix.
Feb 23, 2016 7:28PM PST

Only that those special folders act differently. I recall some hour long discussion at a Microsoft session why but I can't condense it to fit here.