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[ Go to June 1997 Table of Contents ]
WinLab Reviews
-- by James E. Powell
If you're tired of the limited File/Open and File/Save dialog boxes in Windows 3.x or 95, it's time to add File-Ex 2.0 to your Desktop. File-Ex loads at start-up, then sits in your Win95 Tray (or it can be hidden) and replaces those two common dialog boxes from your Windows applications. Applications that don't normally use the standard boxes can be "trained." With buttons for the most-needed file-management tools (including moving files and renaming folders), File-Ex provides four pull-down lists to recall the files and directories you use most or used last. Best of all, this utility displays the last 25 files and folders you used across all applications. File-Ex offers plenty of small but significant time-savers. When you open a file dialog, it automatically switches to the last directory you used for an application, so you don't have to track through a complex folder hierarchy. File-Ex displays file size, as well as the date and time a file was created or last updated. If you don't want to replace the standard file dialog boxes, you can add a File-Ex button to the existing dialog boxes. The program is especially useful with Windows 3.x, since you can already handle some functions (deleting a file or creating a folder) with a right mouse click in Win95. While it isn't rocket science, File-Ex turns out to be a very handy utility that eliminates the need to switch back and forth between your application and File Manager or Explorer when the common file dialog boxes won't do. If you work on dozens of files during a day, File-Ex deserves a place on your hard disk.
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