FreeCommander Forum

I wanted FC to always open with the same two tabs. I want a tab for my C: drive and another for my D: drive.



I tried many and many combinations of settings from within FC but could not get what I wanted to stick. If anyone knows how to do that please chime in.

I finally gave up on changing settings within FC and opened the FreeCommander.ini file to see if anything in there could help me get what I wanted. And there was.

There is group of entries that control what tabs open when the program starts. They are:

TfcTabControl_Left
Tab_left #1
Tab_left #2
TfcTabControl_Right
Tab_right #1
Tab_right #2

The TfcTabControl_Left entry lists all of the tabs that should open in the left panel.

[TfcTabControl_Left]
1=left #1
2=left #2
ActiveTab=left #2

In the example above the 1= and 2= items mean that there are two tabs to open when the program starts. On the right hand side of the = sign there are names assigned to each tab. Those names are used to locate the corresponding entries in the INI file. Those entries for the left panel look like this:

[Tab_left #1]
Caption=C: Drive
Path=C:\
....

[Tab_left #2]
Caption=D: Drive
Path=D:\- Downloads
....

And that's it after you do the same for the right panel.

In the examples above and in my INI file, I've changed the tab names created by FC to 'left #1', 'left #2', etc. The names FC creates look like this:

[TfcTabControl_Left]
1=DDE8DD17-11DB-4C26-B459-EEE20B249337
2=903D5B3B-9993-4719-AD11-BDAD0689B9B9
ActiveTab=903D5B3B-9993-4719-AD11-BDAD0689B9B9

[Tab_DDE8DD17-11DB-4C26-B459-EEE20B249337]
Caption=C: Drive
Path=C:\
....

Changing the names makes no difference as long as you use the same names for each tab you want to open.

In my experience these settings do not get overwritten by other settings in FC.

I haven't tested this exhaustively. It works for me in the 64 release version and the 64 beta version and I'm good with that.

NOTE: You should always back up your INI file before making any changes.

Open the tabs for C: and D: as you want. Also the tabs you wish for the other panel.
Right click on each tab (you want to stay permanently) and chose one of the "lock folder" entries.
Go to Tools > Settings > Folder Tabs > Tab Management and activate "Close all not locked tabs when the program ends".
Go to Tools > Settings > Start program > Start/Temp-Folder and set the Start-folders as you like for left and right panel.

This would also be useful if it would work:

ralfso wrote:Open the tabs for C: and D: as you want. Also the tabs you wish for the other panel.
Right click on each tab (you want to stay permanently) and chose one of the "lock folder" entries.
Go to Tools > Settings > Folder Tabs > Tab Management and activate "Close all not locked tabs when the program ends".
Go to Tools > Settings > Start program > Start/Temp-Folder and set the Start-folders as you like for left and right panel.

I tried that with the non-beta version several months ago and while I did get the locked tabs to show on program start I also always got an extra tab as well. I tried toggling on/off different settings in FC options but I couldn't get that to work 100%.

Do you only get the locked tabs on program start or do you get an extra one as well?

joby_toss wrote:This would also be useful if it would work:

+1

ashbass wrote:

ralfso wrote:Open the tabs for C: and D: as you want. Also the tabs you wish for the other panel.
Right click on each tab (you want to stay permanently) and chose one of the "lock folder" entries.
Go to Tools > Settings > Folder Tabs > Tab Management and activate "Close all not locked tabs when the program ends".
Go to Tools > Settings > Start program > Start/Temp-Folder and set the Start-folders as you like for left and right panel.

I tried that with the non-beta version several months ago and while I did get the locked tabs to show on program start I also always got an extra tab as well. I tried toggling on/off different settings in FC options but I couldn't get that to work 100%.

Do you only get the locked tabs on program start or do you get an extra one as well?

Using latest donor 666, using the locked folders approach described above works perfectly. All un-locked folders are not re-opened when the program is closed and re-launched, and only the locked folders are opened. There is no extra folder opened.

However I was unable to get any pre-set Start-folders functionality to work at all. I tried that first, but with zero success. Don't know if this is because I have over/under split screen rather than left/right, or perhaps I was using the wrong syntax, but I was unable to make this do anything.

Nevertheless, setting up tabs for locked folders, and setting "close all not locked tabs", works fine.