ED#25 : The Case Of The Missing File Names

Have you ever opened up a folder in Windows Explorer, only to find all their file names have gone missing? All the files are there but you won't be able to see their names!

Well, that happened to me recently while I was working on another article. I got a real shock when I couldn't see the file names! For some reason, they just disappeared!

There was a whole load of HTML files and pictures in the folder. And the missing file names made it impossible to identify the HTML files!

As for pictures, I was still able to identify them by the picture thumbnails. However, since we create a full-sized picture as well as a smaller version for each picture we use, the missing file names made it impossible to identify which was the full-sized picture and which was the smaller one! So, it was a very frustrating situation.

Luckily, I found a solution for this problem! And this solution revealed just what caused the problem in the first place. But first, let's take a look at the problem, so to speak.

The Problem

The picture below shows a sample folder I created for this article.

As you can see, the Thumbnail view of this folder shows all four pictures in the folder but NO file names, whatsoever.

Even when I switched the folder to the Filmstrips view, Windows Explorer still refused to display the file names.

However, not all folder views are affected by this problem. Let's take a look in the next page.