Hi. Go to that folder in explorer, first set how you wish the bulk of all your folders to open and then go Tools, Folder Options, View and click Apply to all Folders. Then set the view you want for that particular folder eg thumbnail, and scroll right down to Remember each folder's View Settings; check and apply.

Thanks gerbil, but I know about the change of folder options on a global scale. That is not what I am intending to do. At the moment when I go into my "Nikon" folder and view files, the files all show up as Thumbnails. You can do this by going to the folder you are putting jpg files into beforehand (if you wish) and clicking "View" and selecting "Thumbnails" and every time I view THAT folder, I see thumbnails show up as the default for THAT particular folder. I don't want thumbnails all through out my folders on my 3 drives. In the "UPDATES" folder, they appear as icons since there are a lot of exe and txt files in there and it would not be as good to show up as Thumbnails.

What I am meaning, is there has to be some registry setting that when you are in an application like Adobe 7, or Color Pilot, or other programs, and click "OPEN" and a menu window opens up, then you see the files and they are in "List" format, you go to the VIEW option at the top, and click on it,and "list" is the one selected and then you click "Thumbnails" and then all the thumbnails of THAT particular folder appears as small images, in this OPEN dialog. This is a pop up program in nearly all open programs in Windows.



Recap: The title is not 'how to change the view from list to thumbnails in FOLDER view' but rather "Change the default view from "list" to "thumbnails" in the open dialog?"

Sigh... gotcha now... and on re-reading it I don't know how I confused your first post...
I'll get back to you, thinking cap is on. I just checked my apps... Photoshop is list, ACDSee is thumbnails by default.... others pgms vary. Checking actions, it seems that both Photoshop and ACDSee [a photo app for Pentax gear] vary the view type according to folder content - if the folder you have in the Open window contains any non-picture formats the View type defaults to List.... if the are only pictures, eg jpegs, gifs, whatever, then both apps use Thumbnail view. On my sys. So that does point to a registry entry controlling the action.. it makes it less likely that it would come from both softwares...

Skip that post, it's not correct.

I just checked my apps... Photoshop and ACDSee [a photo app for Pentax gear] are thumbnails by default only when opening My Pictures folder, otherwise the List View applies by default in other folders of pics. On my sys. It seems. So that does point to a registry entry controlling the action.. it is less likely that it would come from both softwares...

you can use My Documents -> My Pictures for all your images...

It is magically (I still do not know how ) having thumbs on Ope/Save dialogs...

+ to move My Documents (If you need to ...) do Drive D: go to Start Menu -> and right click My Documents -> on the target tab use the move function... specifying a path like "D:\My Documents"

This helps?

It's easy to modify it with C and win32 api
ACDSee does that...

I am exp a similar issue, when using my pics it works fine but when viewing pics on say my sdhc card it will not remember the thumbnail view i have previously chosen....I have the same question for doing a regedit, I dont want my regular folders to have a thumbnail view , only my pics on a global scale - no matter where i view them from....any ideas?

http://nationalfurnituresupply.com/docs/Default-Thumbnailview.zip

Default Thumbnail View