Customize the "Open" dialog box

Siddharth Maheshwari · 24-01-2007, 10:19 PM

Tutorial number = 6

In this tutorial I will tell u how to customize the open dialog box side icons through registry.
Before starting take a look at my open dialog box before modification:-

a>Click on start button.
b>Click on run.
c>Type regedit (Inbuilt registryeditor of windows)
d>Navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies]
e> Create a new key called "ComDlg32".
f>Select the key made and create a new key called "Placesbar".
g>After creating the key all the icons in the open dialog box will disappear.

U will get the following look

h>In the key "placesbar" create a new string value called "Place0" .
i>Edit it and type the path of the folder or drive u want.
j>U can have upto 5 icons in the open dialog box (i.e till place4)

After this u will get the following look:-

Thats all frnds if u hav any queries ask I will try to solve it.

Vishal Gupta · 24-01-2007, 10:45 PM

Its a very old trick buddy and approx. all tuning utilities contain this trick, like TweakUI, Tuneup Utilities, etc.
And if u want to manually do it, then I'm posting a readymade reg code for it:

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\comdlg32]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\comdlg32\PlacesBar]
"Place0"="A:\\"
"Place1"="C:\\"
"Place2"="D:\\"
"Place3"="E:\\"
"Place4"="F:\\"

Just replace values of "Place0", "Place1", "Place2", "Place3", "Place4" to ur desired locations.

__________
One more thing, if u really want to change the look of Open/save dialog box, then just open %windir%\System32\Comdlg32.dll file in Resource Hacker and goto:

Dialog -> 1552 -> 1033

Now u can play with the position and size of all controls, even u can add ur customized controls in the box.

PS: U'll also get other boxes in this file, like color selecting box, print setup box, find & replace box, etc.