The My Pictures folder contains many sub-folders. Some of these sub-folders have four pictures shown on the yellow folder icon, whereas other folders do not have any photos on the yellow folder icon (i.e. just a blank yellow folder icon). When I open this folder with four pictures all the files appear. Why does this happen rather than just showing the four pictures? Also, how do I eliminate the folder without any pictures but without losing the whole folder? The computer is running Windows XP.

Regarding your first question about opening a folder with the four picture thumbnails superimposed onto the folder icon, it is normal behaviour for all the photos within that folder to appear. As you have found, the folder itself contains many pictures however, the first four pictures within the folder are included in the folder icon to provide for easier identification of the content of that folder. This does not mean that there are only four pictures in the folder. As you can imagine, it would not be possible for Windows to put all the photos which are contained within the folder on the folder icon, since you could have thousands of photos and there simply isn’t sufficient space to show thumbnails of all the photos in the relatively limited confines of the folder icon. So to sum-up, the four thumbnails which are shown on the folder icon are just there to provide a visual clue and hint as to the content of the folder.

For other users who may not be familiar with this feature of Windows, it is only present when viewing the My Pictures folder in Thumbnail view. You can toggle this view by going to the “View” menu > “Thumbnails”. This will make all the icons within the folder bigger and thus provide Windows with sufficient room to add the photo thumbnails to the folder. Likewise, other file types (such as photo files and movie files) which Windows supports will also display as a thumbnail. This can be quite handy when viewing a folder full of photos as you can see a small thumbnail preview of each file before opening, rather than having to purely identify the photos through their file names (which can be fairly cryptic, particularly if they have been downloaded from a digital camera which just sequentially names files).

If you find that Windows does not automatically detect that the folder contains pictures, and thus does not show a series of picture thumbnails, you may need to manually tell Windows that the folder contains pictures. Windows generally tries its best to detect the files within the folder, but sometimes this can be hit and miss, particularly if there are mixed file types within the folder (such as a majority of pictures but also documents). To manually tell Windows that there are pictures within the folder and it should attempt to show thumbnails on the folder icon, right-click on the folder and select “Properties”. In the window that appears, click the “Customize” tab. Under the “What kind of folder do you want?” heading, select “Photo Album (best for fewer files)” or “Pictures (best for many files)” and click OK. Remember, the folder will need to be displayed in thumbnail view for the folder with picture thumbnails to appear, so make sure you put the folder into this view mode by going to the “View” menu > “Thumbnails”. As an aside, if you are interested in other ways to customise the appearance of folders then make sure you read the Tip of the Week as this covers the other options available in the “Customize” folder tab.

Moving on to the next question, I had some difficulty understanding this part of your question. It seems that you want to eliminate the folder without any thumbnails on the folder icon without losing the entire folder. Of course if you delete the folder you are going to delete everything within the folder, since the folder is essentially a container that holds the items within. Likewise, if you did want to remove the folder then you could just move the items within the folder to a different location before deleting the folder itself. However, I imagine that your question is not as easy to solve as suggested by these two possible solutions! Upon reading your question again I am inferring that you are actually asking how to get the folder without any thumbnails to display thumbnails on the folder icon. Fortunately we covered this point previously in the response to your question about what to do when Windows does not automatically recognise that you have pictures within the folder and you need to manually tell Windows that you want the folder to show thumbnails of the pictures within.