Windows 10: Quick Access - No longer separating folders and files

I'm not sure what happened but my Quick Access is no longer separating my files from my folders. Everything is just displaying in one long list and it's very challenging to navigate.


It used to look like this:




But now it looks like this:



Cleared recent docs and created blank ones for privacy.

How do I get it back to normal? I have tried all the options and changing to defaults, etc. Changing the view to icons/tiles does not regroup them either. They just are a list. I want my categories back!

:)

 

Quick Access bar

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

We would be glad to help you with the issue you are facing today. I understand the difficulty.

Remove items from Quick access.

I would suggest you to follow the below steps.

• Right click on the file or folder.
• Select the option “unpin from the quick access”

To pin items to an item already on the quick access bar.

Follow the below steps.

I would suggest you to create folder in the desktop screen & place all the files or folder which need to pin to the quick access.

• Open the quick access.
• Select the Desktop option.
• Right click on the folder & select the option “pin to quick access”

Hope this helps in resolving the issue. If the issue persists, do get back to us. We will be happy to assist you.



Thank you.

 

Quick Access not searching Pictures folder

Summary, that last suggestion didn't work.

• I moved the pictures to another folder temporarily.

• Then I tried to remove the Pictures folder with option one at Add or Remove Folders from This PC in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials. Even after rebooting, the Pictures folder remained.
• So I tried using option two. Same thing: reboot >> Pictures folder still there.

• Since there were no troubleshooting steps for this scenario, just for the heck of it, I ran through the restore steps. Copied some pictures into the Pictures folder, ran a Quick Access search and initial problem remains: Searching all of QA doesn't find any files in Pictures folder, running search on just the Pictures folder does. I want to run a global search and find matching files in any/all of the Documents, Music, Videos, and Pictures folders.

That article dates from 2015 and I'm guessing is out of date. I hope it didn't create potential future problems in my registry.

Bottom line: I'm still looking for a fix.

 

Windows 10 Quick Access - Folders grouped separately sometimes

In Windows 10, Quick Access is really great. I like the fluidity of it. Here's my question: sometimes (most of the time for me) folders are integrated into the list of recent files (20 recent files/folders), and sometimes folders are grouped separately (8
recent folders, then 20 recent files). I can actually click on several folders and convince W10 to do the separate grouping. I prefer the separate grouping, but when I am mainly working in files, they go away and show files and folders together. Is there a
way to default to show the folders grouped separately from the files. I'll try to post screen caps if that helps. Thanks!