Windows 10: Advanced Folder Customizing in Win11?

As so many do, I have a large variety of folders of varying content. Some are app icon folders, others contain photos, still others have documents. Is there a way to customize in what size and shape each folder opens .... customized manually set for the content of each folder. Because of this varying content, some need to be opened full screen while others in a small window for only a handful of icons. Some of the folders need the left pane visible while it is unnecessary for others.Is this customization possible in Win11 Pro or, if not, are there plug-in utilities that can control that

:)

 

Custom Folder Icons Didn't Move with Other Settings to New Win11 Computer

Using the steps at How to reset the icon cache database on Windows 10 to kill explorer.exe, I copied the contents of the Explorer folder to a new folder IconCache (size 1.55GB) in my OneDrive. Once that folder synced to the new computer, I used the same process to copy the contents of the IconCache folder to my Win11 machine and then rebooted. The folders still have the default Windows folder icon and not my custom folder icons. The path to the custom icon file doesn't appear in Folder Properties > Customize tab > Folder icons section and Change Icon. I can manually re-add that path to a folder and the icon will change to the custom icon. That info has to be stored somewhere. If not the thumbnail and iconcache db files, then where? The registry? If so, where?

 

Custom Folder Icons Didn't Move with Other Settings to New Win11 Computer

I have almost 7000 folders worth of pictures. On my Windows 10 computer, I converted one picture in each folder into an .ico image and made that the custom folder image. I then created other folders that contained shortcuts to the folders grouped by various themes to make finding a particular picture or group of pictures easier. The .ico files were stored in a separate file in OneDrive. That migrated over to my new Win11 computer. But now none of the almost 7000 folders have their custom folder icon image. They all have the default Windows folder icon. If I go back into Folder Properties > Customize tab > Folder icons section and Change Icon, I can manually associate the custom .ico file to the folder image again, but I don't want to have to do that for almost 7000 folders.

The shortcuts to the folders in the "theme" folders have the correct path to the target folder. But those shortcuts also show the default shortcut folder icon. I manually associated the custom .ico file to one folder and its folder image updated as did its shortcuts in the theme folders.

It will take me months of lost productivity to have to do this for almost 7000 folders. Please tell me there is a more programmatic/automated way to get my custom icons back! I do note that the IconCache.db on my Win10 computer is about 3x the size of the file on my new Win11 computer. Would replacing the Win11 file with the Win10 one do the trick? It can't be that simple though, so do I need to somehow get the thumbcache_xxx.db and iconcache_xxx.db files in %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer on the Win10 computer over to the same place on the Win11 computer?

Thanks,

Rodney

 

Folder Customization

Hello Todd,

Thank you for visiting Microsoft Community and providing us with the detailed description about the issue.

As per the description, I understand that you are experiencing issue with folder customization on the system.

I certainly understand your concern and will try my best to help you.

I would suggest you to refer to the steps given below and check if that helps.

• To do this, right click on the folder for which you want to change the icon background image and select Properties. Or simply select it and press Alt+Enter on
  your keyboard. This opens the Properties window of the folder.
• Here, go to the Customize tab, in which you will find the Folder pictures section. Click
  on the Choose File button, Browse and select the picture you want to use as background. Then, press OK twice.
• Once you selected the picture, click on OK again, and you are done.
  

Also, there could be some third party software’s available which might fix this issue
but Microsoft does not recommend that.

Note:
Using Third Party Software, including hardware drivers can cause serious problems that may prevent your computer from booting properly. Microsoft cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the use of Third Party Software
can be solved. Using Third Party Software is at your own risk.

I hope this information is helpful.

Please do let us know if you need any further assistance, we will be glad to assist you.

Thank you.