Jim Dell wrote:
Paul wrote:
Jim Dell wrote:
I am having a strange problem with my desktop PC.
When I go to open a file (in any program) it use to show suggestions
after I type in a few characters of the file name.

It no longer does this.

How can I bring back that feature and what's its proper name?

Jim

At a guess, it's called "AutoComplete".

https://www.winhelponline.com/xp/nofileautocomplete.htm

The winhelponline site thinks you currently have this situation,
which turns it off.

[HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Exp lorer\AutoComplete]
"AutoComplete In File Dialog" DWORD 0

Their registry merge file just removes the entry entirely.

I couldn't find a list of alternative values for that
entry, so you could set the DWORD to say 1 and have
the thing work again. Maybe it would work, but I don't
have documentation. It would be nicer if they just
used Booleans and were done with it.

When the item is completely missing, and there is no

"AutoComplete In File Dialog"

item, then the file dialog should autocomplete for you and
offer a small menu of matches for what you've typed so far.

Paul
Paul
Thank you.
That led me to the Setting-Internet Properties . Content tab where you
can turn it on.

It's kind of misleading in that by its name you would think it only
applies to the internet, but it also applies to Office programs.


The other proposed fixes didn't work, bur thanks to those people for
trying.

Jim

Windows is tricky when it comes to naming.

explorer.exe File Explorer (it also draws your desktop on older OSes)

iexplore.exe Internet Explorer (a web browser)

Explorer.exe is your DE or desktop environment. (On Windows 10,
the Task Manager shows "DWM", which helps handle a mixture of
environments, so the partitioning is a bit different on Win10.
The "Displaying" function has been separated a bit.)

The desktop environment has common file dialogs. Any Win32 application
could be using the Open Dialog, the one with the Autocomplete feature.

The registry entry in my previous post, belongs to explorer.exe.

The registry entry should affect any application which
"calls" the system open file dialog. By offering library
routines of that sort, it saves application developers time,
and it also provides a consistent user experience from
one program to another. You can have Notepad open and
have that dialog. You can have Autocad open and
have that dialog.

An application developer is perfectly free to make their
own open file dialog, and break the rules by doing so.
Perhaps displaying files in some new, disturbing way.
But that's also a lot of work. The lazy mans way is
to call the system dialog.

*******

iexplore.exe is the web browser. There are actually two
executables on the machine. There is a 32 bit version
and a 64 big version (on a 64 bit OS installation). We're
not sure why both exist - it could be some plugins that
are 32 bit only and profit from that version. It also
is a demonstration to other developers, that the OS can
support both at the same time. Of course, nobody told
the users this, and most people aren't aware what
the hell they just executed :-) I always get a laugh
out of this (Microsoft showing off, and confusing
the users, at the same time).

And the Internet security settings dialog that is used
with iexplore.exe, that applies to more than just that
browser. Some of the other third-party browser makers
didn't want to duplicate the function, so they accepted
the iexplore.exe settings as their own. If you change
those settings, and you notice something weird happening
with your other browser, that's a potential reason why.

The iexplore.exe security settings, occupy around
2000 registry entries. Which is a good reason not
to change them that way (with regedit) :-) The
reason for the large number, is there are five
"zones", and the permutations and combinations
multiply together to give 2000 entries.

Paul