Microsoft tidies up Windows 8 file management

Microsoft has rejigged its file management tools to give people better control over moving and manipulating their data.

The changes should be implemented in Windows 8, Steven Sinofsky, the president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

"With the increasing amount of local storage measured in terabytes, containing photos (in multiple formats and very large files), music, and video, these common [file management] operations are being taxed in new ways," Sinofsky wrote.

"These changes, along with consistent feedback about what we could improve, have inspired us to take a fresh look and redesign these operations."

The majority of Windows commands issued by users relate to copying, moving, renaming and deleting files, according Microsoft, which gathers data from Windows 7 PCs.

For this reason, Microsoft is looking to give better feedback to people on jobs in progress and has done a "thorough scrub" of the codebase to remove many of the confirmation dialog boxes that Windows regularly flashes up, Sinofsky wrote.

Once implemented, the changes will mean file copying will be consolidated into a single dialog box; file management tasks will be able to be paused, resumed and stopped; the display will show data throughput and expected time to job completion; and tweaks will be made to how people can fix jarring filenames.

"All of this adds up to building a significantly improved copy experience," Sinofsky wrote, "one that is unified, concise, and clear."

Microsoft has not yet given a due date for Windows 8, but wrote in a blog post in October that it was around two years away from hitting the market.