I have been trying to find a way to edit the information that is displayed in the "Extra Columns" provided when right-clicking on the column header of the file view pane. Specifically the 'Description' and 'Comments' columns.
I used to have a shell extension on my 32bit machine that allowed me to attach comments to files. I found it very useful for all the downloads that I accumulate. This also worked for files that didn't have a 'Details' tab on their 'File - Properties'.
The file system on Windows does not support a standard way of having a file comment.
Some file types supports it (MP3 via ID3 tags, JPG via EXIF tags), some extra tools for adding user comments to files stores the comments in extra files next to the file or some stored them in a comments database, or as substream data to the file.
And since there is not standard way with comment and since there is no support for any of the 3de party solutions yet.
Editing file comments is not supported yet.
Secondly. How can I enable the display of these columns by default. Currently I can set up a folder with these extra columns but if I duplicate it it reverts to showing only the standard columns.
Go to "Customize Column Set..." and the modify the "[Default]" column set. Then the default column layout will be changed.
Thirdly. I have just done a quick check of comments and descriptions that are provided by files that I haven't edited and the 'Comments" column that MC provides doesn't seem to match the information that 'File - Properties' shows. e.g. I have a WMP plugin that displays lyrics for the active song, the 'File - Properties' shows the following info in the "Comments" section
"This plugin adds global hotkey support to Windows Media Player"
MC leaves this field blank.
Also MC shows, under the 'Comments' column, for a number of files "This installation was built with Inno Setup.". Information that normally doesn't display in the 'File - Properties' tab. Although examining with a resource hacker does show the same info under the 'Comments' value of the 'Versioninfo'.
So to sum up MC's 'Comments' aren't the same as Windows Explorer's 'Comments' and MC's 'Description' displays what Explorer calls 'File - description'
"Extended - Comment" is the comment property from the file version information that can be stored in exe/dll file.
"Extended - Description" is the description info from the file version information that is stored in exe/dll files
Explorer in Windows 7 handles the comment property differently. It get the information from different places depending on the file type.
For example for .msi file. it get the comment info from the Windows Installer Properties stored in that file.
And they way it is stored is unique to .msi files.
