For years I've been looking in vain for a program that will, with a click or
hotkey, reliably capture the title, size and position (or minimised state) of
all File Explorer folders currently open. And allow me to restore them at any
later time on this Win 10 PC. It would be a welcome bonus if it did the same for
ALL apps, but I appreciate that's probably far more complicated.

So this is one of several requests I've made here and elsewhere over the years,
in the hope that others with a similar requirement have now found such a tool.

(I've also posted this in alt.comp.freeware.)

Terry, UK

"Terry Pinnell" <me@somewhere.invalid> wrote

| For years I've been looking in vain for a program that will, with a click
or
| hotkey, reliably capture the title, size and position (or minimised state)
of
| all File Explorer folders currently open. And allow me to restore them at
any
| later time on this Win 10 PC. It would be a welcome bonus if it did the
same for
| ALL apps, but I appreciate that's probably far more complicated.
|

That could be done without too much trouble using a VBScript.
The Shell.Appllication object's method "Windows" returns a collection
of open folders and IE instances. Officially it returns a collection
of IE objects, but folders are actually ShellFolderView objects.
Using that method you could return a list of windows with paths,
coordinates, size, etc. You could then store that and re-open the
windows next time the script is run. Very simple: If the script finds
a list, it opens those windows and deletes the list. If it finds no list,
it saves a list and quits. You could create a shortcut for it on the
desktop and set a hotkey for that.

If you're curious you could try to write that, or look around for
it. With a little more work you could enumerate all open windows
and parse their window titles to see what programs are open. That
would be more complicated. I wouldn't write either version because
I just have no use for such a tool. But it's possible that someone has
written the folder version as a script. You could ask in the VBScript
group. Maybe you'll get lucky and someone will want to show off
their skill. :)

"Mayayana" <mayayana@invalid.nospam> wrote:

>"Terry Pinnell" <me@somewhere.invalid> wrote
>
>| For years I've been looking in vain for a program that will, with a click
>or
>| hotkey, reliably capture the title, size and position (or minimised state)
>of
>| all File Explorer folders currently open. And allow me to restore them at
>any
>| later time on this Win 10 PC. It would be a welcome bonus if it did the
>same for
>| ALL apps, but I appreciate that's probably far more complicated.
>|
>
> That could be done without too much trouble using a VBScript.
>The Shell.Appllication object's method "Windows" returns a collection
>of open folders and IE instances. Officially it returns a collection
>of IE objects, but folders are actually ShellFolderView objects.
>Using that method you could return a list of windows with paths,
>coordinates, size, etc. You could then store that and re-open the
>windows next time the script is run. Very simple: If the script finds
>a list, it opens those windows and deletes the list. If it finds no list,
>it saves a list and quits. You could create a shortcut for it on the
>desktop and set a hotkey for that.
>
> If you're curious you could try to write that, or look around for
>it. With a little more work you could enumerate all open windows
>and parse their window titles to see what programs are open. That
>would be more complicated. I wouldn't write either version because
>I just have no use for such a tool. But it's possible that someone has
>written the folder version as a script. You could ask in the VBScript
>group. Maybe you'll get lucky and someone will want to show off
>their skill. :)
>
>
Thanks. Beyond me as a non-programmer, but I may follow up your suggestion
about asking in that expert group.

I'm rather surprised that this isn't a fairly popular requirement.