Quick Access isn't allowing us to rename the Folders which are pinned, which is unlike the previous versions of Windows.

This can be a deal-breaker for many. One should be able to rename the folders to one's liking (The folder name could be long and tedious for example, and being able to rename or shorten it should continue to be allowed as was the case with Favorites in previous versions)

My work computer just got upgraded tin Win 10 this week. I had my favorites set up and organized perfectly for production work, where I drop PDFs in many different locations. All these shortcuts had reverted to their original names; e.g., I had 6 pinned folders named "1-UP" which was totally stupid. So yesterday I went and renamed them all through properties, NOT REALIZING I WAS ACTUALLY CHANGING THE FOLDER NAMES ON THE COMPANY SERVER. Today all hell broke loose and it was all my fault. Thank goodness nothing was deleted but my innocent mistake disrupted the workflow of quite a few of my co-workers and even the owner of the company was contacted when the problem first arose. I HATE HATE HATE Quick Access. The upgrade also broke my Outlook (with InLoox plug-in) and font management software.

That sounds frustrating. I had a similar problem as we have several folders that are named by my username that I need to access, and they all became my username on Quick Access. I had custom names before the update to Windows 10 ("Scans", "FAI Reports", etc.).

The part about renaming files seems to be your IT department's fault and not yours. I hope you didn't get too much flak for it. Important folders should not be allowed to be renamed by people outside of IT.

If you right-click on the pinned folder, and click on Properties, you can change the name there. But you're right, this is a deal breaker. I work with several different secured drives that have similar or even identical folder names and I must know which drive and which folder I'm working with.

Do not ever do this: changing the name under Properties will rename the original folder/file as well.

This actually caused me to delete important files. Under Win 8.1 i could rename folders on the network so I knew which computer they came from. I assumed they retained their names in Quick Access. Not true. All the shortcuts were renamed to their folder names on host computers. Bad form. And now I can't get Quick Access to work at all. Folders I attempt to pin just result in an error message. This was one of the most useful features in Win 7 and Win 8.1 and now it appears to be toast. The biggest annoyance I've encountered so far in Win 10.

I seem to be the only other person in the universe with this problem. Has anyone found a fix? I can't do anything to Quick Access, always returns an error message..

Paul - I'm confused, is QuickView really bad or is it just different? Microsoft often makes UI changes people don't like but that, if one takes the time to use it, improves productivity. The Ribbon in Office is a great example. Did Microsoft make this change from Favorites to QuickView for similar reasons? Is it possibly a superior interface? Or was this a mistake - an error in judgment?

I think it's bad. It fills up with folder names very quickly, and I don't want any of that stuff in there.

Completely agree. I'm confused about the negative reaction in the article. Sounds like a dynamic, responsive list that makes it less necessary for you to "manage" that favorites list. How is that bad, exactly...?

It sounds good in theory, but in practice I'm glad I can finally turn off the frequent/recent files and folders. They could be embarrassing, especially since they showed up front and center when I opened File Explorer, sometimes as thumbnails, often as a nasty surprise -- oh yeah, I forgot I looked at that yesterday. I can easily imagine dozens of unpleasant situations. Your boss is looking over your shoulder and sees "My Resume.doc" is a recent/frequent file in your Quick Access folder. Your wife notices that the only photos from your reunion that you viewed last night contained your ex. There's a good reason that the settings are labelled "Privacy."

I've actually grown to love the QuickView and find it far superior to Favorites. It really makes short work of trying to find something I know I've worked on recently, but am not sure where it ended up. I also like that it adjusts itself based on recent activity. For example, I work for a software company and have certain folders I use for each release. When one release ends and I start focusing on the next, the folders I was using frequently have been replaced with the folders for the next release. It's not perfect, of course, but has worked well for me so far.

I use recent activity files from the programme itself, usually it involves MS office anyway, and they have awesome recent and pinned files system, even from the taskbar, so i don't know why they had to add it to favourites too. and there used to be a separate recent files directory anyway, so I don't see why the 'favourites' had to go... you can't rename folders in the quick access.

I second that. It seems to me that all too often we get so hung up on the ways we do things from day to day that we immediately revile anything that isn't exactly the same, regardless of any merit it may have. Regardless, I think this will be very helpful to the typical users who are often unaware of where their files go once they save them. I think it's a good thing that it's enabled by default, and that they offer the ability to disable it for those nit picky techies that want to do so.

We'll see how you feel about this after a while. :)

Well, it has been a couple of years and I have a question for Paul :).

Do you know how can I expand the number of frequent folders, not pinning, just expand the number of dynamic folders updated. I have been using this feature and find it reliable but most importantly useful. However, the number of folders refreshed is slightly too low for what I would like, contrary to what was expressed in the article and in the comments.

You don't have to keep reading but if you do you'll understand why this is a big feature for me.

I am doing my PhD I create folders for each technique I use and each folder (more or less 87 right now) will have a subfolder with data from specific experiments or days, the folder tree grows in further but you get the idea. I know where everything is but if the past 3 days I have been working with data from an specific folder that is deep in the hierarchy in my system it is time consuming to go looking for it. Instead, it appears in the frequent ones and I go directly to the job on hand, that is GREAT! It reduces time and increases productivity.

That's because we spend so much time learning the newest way to do the same thing in countless apps on countless platforms and many of us are just tired of it. There's nothing efficient about constantly having to relearn something.

This is exactly correct. The fundamental basics of the Windows OS has not really altered since maybe Windows 95 (discounting Windows 8 which was a horrific mutation) but MS keep making minor alterations to the UI which confuses people who are only casual users. The casual user feels they have to relearn the OS while the experienced users find that each new OS adds little functionality, but much disruption.
I don't mind Windows 10, but really hate the quick access. I hate favourites too. I know where my things are so just let me organise it myself. This all feels like an attempt to dumb the OS down like an apple system where the end user is treated like an idiot.

This is my big complaint about the direction of the software industry as a whole. The "norm" has been to update things by simply moving things around and often removing capabilities and replacing them with features that do less and reduce the personalization capabilities.
Everyone is different. They have different needs, different habits, different priorities. Software should be evolving in a way which allows each person and their machines to become more efficient bu allowing the user to layout their machine the way they work best with it. Kind of like how you go to a new desk and lay things out the way you want. You may use a coffee cup for pens, or put them in the drawer, or in your pocket, or one pen behind your ear. Or you may never write at all.
Instead, software seems to be moving in a direction where the user is forced to work inside the box of the developers who can't even come close to a design that is boxed in but everyone can use efficiently. They think that the user should learn how to use the machine instead. It's like someone saying "We bought everyone in the office a fancy pen holder that puts your most used pens closest to you. You are now required to keep all of your pens in there and no longer allowed to put them in your drawer, on you desk, in your pocket or anywhere else because it is more efficient and will increase productivity." But what if your favorite pen won't fit. What if you have a medical condition where reaching for it causes you pain? What if you have to use 6 different colors for things and the holder only holds four?
They totally miss the point that we have several machines... tablets, phones, laptops, smart TVs, etc. And each one pushes changes to us regularly so we're all stuck in a cycle of constantly re-learning where everything is. Like the problem that led me here which I wouldn't even need to be here for if they had just left things alone. It's made worse by the fact that they don't produce an extensive change-log so we just have to poke around and hunt online for people with similar problems and use those solutions, never knowing if those solutions are going to introduce a bug somewhere else....at which point we're later spending time chasing down a bug.
I find I am spending at least an hour or two every week re-learning changed software and OS changes. There is nothing efficient about that at all and frankly I'm tired of it.
But at least Office 2016 brought a tiny bit of color back.

Agreed. I received a new laptop yesterday afternoon from IT with Windows 10; now everything has changed, yet again, from a computer I was given a mere two years ago and I've wasted an entire morning trying to figure out what I need to do in order to be productive at work again. To my mind, all of this ordeal has been an stupid waste of my time and I can only wish I had a software engineer sitting beside me this whole time to explain to me why all of these unwanted changes are such good idea and why do I have to suddenly start thinking like a developer instead of an end user? Seriously unhappy with this crap.

Brilliant, brilliant, insightful comment. Thank you for adding this to the discussion. I found it echoes my feelings perfectly.

Completely spot on! Brilliant!

So what is the %USERPROFILE%\Links folder for now, with the default behaviour? What is currently in my Links folder does not seem to correspond with what I see in Quick Access at all.

Is it now another redundant user shell folder, like Saved Games and Contacts?

This is fucking rage inducing. HOW THE HELL DO YOU GET THE OLD FAVOURITES BACK!?

Agreed on sentiment, and fortunately he tells you how at the end of the article--kind of the point of it actually.

I agree with Nischi85, any UI that forces stuff or options on people is bad because people don't always use their computer for work (as CasualAdventurer makes it seem) for example, I just like to do random stuff all the time that does not require this option the quick access has to offer mainly because I don't access the same folders a lot, I change a lot, therefore the ability to just pin items to the quick access works best for me without the dynamic option doing it for me.

I also like to mention the annoying fact that the quick access does not give me the option to rename those folders that are in there as far as I know. So, if i have a folder named Pictures on 3 different drives, guess what....yea you guessed it...quick access would come into play and add the same folder name 3 times and I wouldn't be aware of the drive these folders come from unless I go over each one. Is this what you call productive? I think not.. and the favorites folder did let me rename each item in there. I rest my case.

I’ve cleared the recent files on windows ten. What I did was, since the “recent files/recent items” no longer appear under the “favorites menu”, I searched for it on my drive c. There appeared quite a few folders “recent”. I cleared most of them. What happened next was that, the frequent folders no longer appear and when I tried pinning folders to quick access, it said the “parameter is incorrect”. What should I do to restore the ability to pin or naturally pin folders to “frequent folder” after I opened files within a folder/s?

I went to %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\, went up a directory, and then dragged and dropped the RECENT folder into the Quick View. It's not perfect, but it works most of the time. I don't know why it's not always there, but I think it has something to do with some software growing their own Open/Save dialog box.

What I don't like is the Quick View having a "lag" for when it adds items to its "recent" section. I want the LAST locations I was at. It's doing some kind of counting. And there are only 4 locations. I don't know if that's because I added some "favorite" folders to the list, or what. But the RECENT thing usually helps now.

same problem here...

See my reply above.

The quick access just added most files and folders I used yesterday changing the order, making it more difficult to find my favourite ones...i don't want to see all my recently most used folders and files there, because i might just have a short project I am doing, and I will not need to access these later... So I disabled the recency effect, but that still doesn't bring back the rename option... *sigh*

Quick access is so bad... Can't reorder files/folders, can't rename them, there is a pin next to each file/ folder that doesn't do anything... or I was not able to find what it does and if that's the case, why is it so difficult to find out what it does? There is a blank file sheet at the bottom of the list I can't get rid off (similar to the one when windows can't find the type of app to open it)

Why can't they do little pop ups and say: hey, there is a new feature available, quick access, want to try it??
Maybe that way they would get less fall out by changing user interface, because people would be actively engaged in trying it out when they want it, rather than being forced into changing habits.

One thing Microsoft should definitely do is borrow the UI from Edge browser for file explorer, like the forward and back buttons, and make it more touch friendly!

There is an option called Tablet Mode, I haven't used it though so I don't know if what you need would be available in that mode, but yea.

Another moronic Microsoft downgrade. My 4 network drives all have a folder called PUBLIC which when pinned to favorites in Windows 8 showed the (PUBLIC) folder and the name of the network drive so I could differentiate between the four different drives (Plus I could rename them if I like). Now, in Windows 10 the 4 shared network folders (PUBLIC) in the quick access are now all called (PUBLIC) and there is no way to rename them, so I can't actually tell one network drive from the next. I can fix this by dragging the whole network drive over but this adds one more mouse click to access the network folder I need (PUBLIC). This defeats the purpose and doesn't provide quick access to the network folder I need.. Way to remove functionality Microsoft, I should know by now that if something works well in WIndows, Microsoft will work hard to screw it up.

I have a folder that somehow got pinned (the music folder from my smartphone) - when the device is disconnected, the options on right click are limited and there is no "unpin" option. On a whim brought on by desperation, I plugged my phone back into my laptop and now I have a much larger right click menu with the option to unpin the item. However, doing that doesn't actually unpin the damn thing!

I also pinned another folder and then unpinned it to test it, but I still can't get this one connected device folder out of my Quick Access menu. Any ideas??

How do I update the 'Desktop' link in Quick Access? I moved my Desktop folder to another drive, and now the item in Quick Access is broken. For some reason, I can't unpin it, so I can't replace it by pinning the current 'Desktop' folder in its stead.

I know I'm late, but I was searching for a solution myself and you actually helped, so now I have a solution - you have to add the desktop folder back where the quick access link points to (C:\users\username\desktop), then you can unpin and then remove the folder.

I really hate that you can't pin multiple folders from the same directory (at least not from a network share), absolutely annoying. If it was somehow able to do both the new functionality in one spot while actually retaining pinned locations and allow more than one folder from a directory, I'd be a happy camper.

THANK YOU SO FREAKING MUCH!!! This was irritating the FRICK out of me!

Ugh. I can't change the name of the Quick Access items like I could in Favourites - very annoying 'enhancement'.

I hope Libraries are still available and can be set as the default, as this would be very useful. Quick access probably isn't too bad, once you get used to it, I do want to be able to pin various folders into favorites though.

you can always right click an empty area where they libraries used to be and click show libraries.

They are. They are indeed hidden by default. But they're there.

Libraries haven't gone anywhere, though there is no setting to open to them by default. But you can make that change manually:

http://www.howtogeek.com/14...

Sometimes, it pays off to allow these new features to work. You might not like it, but you could get used to it. Wasn't the lack of Start Menu is Windows 8/8.1 a cause for complaining? It turns out that most got used to the new OS. Quick Access might be a good idea. Besides, configuring Windows features is a real pain as it never does what you might expect. I wonder why they bothered to rename the Favorites name to Quick Access. Why can't they just add features to Favorites to extend it? Use the new features if you like them. Disable them when you don't like them. Oh well. That's Microsoft for you.

Start meniu is back, so.. people probably didn't get used to it and kept complaining :) I wasn't a win 8 user, so can't tell for sure though.. But that the feature is back speaks volumes to me :)

I never used the Start Menu. To devote a key on the keyboard to it is asinine IMHO.

I know lots of users who just bring those start menu folder links onto desktop and still used the start menu from that way. Stupid experiment to disable a feature which is used by everyone without any trouble.

Okay, guys. This is definitely dumb, but I think I've found a work around. My apologies if everyone already figured this out, but...
I made a folder that I pinned to the Quick View Toolbar. Inside the folder I put shortcuts to all my important files on my network and my PC, I, then, renamed all my shortcuts to the name I was used to. It adds one more click, but it's a far sight better than messing with the Quick View Toolbar in my opinion. What do you all think?