Explorer pane does not start in Preferences Startup folder

vdawg · Post by **vdawg** » Wed Nov 03, 2021 1:31 pm

I have set a Startup folder in Preferences, but the Explorer pane always starts pointing to the user Desktop folder rather than my custom Startup folder when I open TextPad (v8.9.0).

ak47wong · Post by **ak47wong** » Wed Nov 03, 2021 3:30 pm

I don't use the Explorer pane myself, but I just tried it and mine always opens C:Windows when I start TextPad (also v8.9.0).

Post by **AmigoJack** » Wed Nov 03, 2021 4:04 pm

Is it a shortcut on the desktop with which you start TextPad? Because such shortcuts also have a "working folder" in their settings, unbound to TextPad. Set a path in there and see if that changes anything.

vdawg · Post by **vdawg** » Wed Nov 03, 2021 6:00 pm

@amigojack: I tried the shortcut "Start In" and that worked -- thanks.

Because that folder is so many levels deep in the drive tree hierarchy, that pane now needs to be very wide to show the files in it. It would be a cool feature to be able to specify a folder for Explorer pane and have it display that folder as top level and only what's beneath it. That would narrow down the display quite a bit in cases like mine where the folder I want to use is 5 or 6 levels deep.

Right now, to keep the files in that folder in view within the pane, that side pane has to be about 20% of the screen width, which kind of eats into my coding space

vdawg · Post by **vdawg** » Wed Nov 03, 2021 7:59 pm

I just opened a file in TP from FileZilla while making some changes, but then the Explorer pane opens to the FileZilla folder.

It would be great if the app had setting (either Preferences/Folders/Startup or a separate setting just for this pane) that could override this behavior and always show a specified folder in this pane. I think it would be more useful to most developers than defaulting to the current directory.

Post by **AmigoJack** » Wed Nov 03, 2021 11:30 pm

That should literally be Configure > Preferences > General > Working folder follows active document - untick that checkbox.

vdawg · Post by **vdawg** » Wed Nov 03, 2021 11:55 pm

Thanks. I had that box checked so I unchecked it, saved preferences, closed TP, went back into FileZilla and opened a file from there, but the Explorer still starts with the FileZilla directory highlighted.

Post by **bbadmin** » Fri Nov 05, 2021 11:36 am

Please try closing the Explorer pane and then change the destination folder for the Startup folder in Configure/Preferences/Folders to somewhere else. Click Apply and then change it back to the required destination. Click Apply/OK and then exit from TextPad. Restart and open the Explorer pane. This worked for us.

vdawg · Post by **vdawg** » Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:05 pm

I performed the steps above and now when I start TP, the Explorer panel opens to one level above the specified folder. That is, if I have the Startup folder set to: c:/temp/source/perl, then the Explorer panel opens with c:/temp/source selected (highlighted) in the tree. I can't see the "perl" folder at this point because the "source" folder is not expanded in the tree.

However, opening TP by double-clicking a specific file from within FileZilla, the Explorer opens to the FileZilla folder instead.

If I open TP from a pinned taskbar shortcut (using StartAllBack for Windows 11 as my taskbar/start menu), it opens TP with Explorer pointing to Windows/System32.

Note: In the desktop shortcut's Start In field, I currently have c:/temp/source/perl. After the above changes, if I remove the Start In field in the shortcut and open TP from the shortcut, the Explorer pane starts up pointing to my Users->Desktop folder.

PS: I used forward slashes in this post when showing examples of directory paths because the backslash characters were being removed or interpolated somehow. I tried escaping them with double backslashes but it didn't work so I replaced them with forward slashes. In TP's Folders, I did use the correct backslash when specifying paths.