Not many users know that Windows Explorer is offering several options on how the folders and files are displayed. One useful Windows Explorer tip that I came across a while ago is to arrange the files and folders in groups in Windows Explorer.
This means basically that every file will be sorted in a group that consists of its starting letter and one additional group for numbers and special chars.
The alphabetical view is only one of the four view modes you can choose from: You can also sort by size (zero, tiny..), type (applications, Avi File..) and Modified Date (Today, Last Week..).
Not every view mode in Windows Explorer offers this setting on the other hand. The popular list view mode does not offer it but all other modes do.
The new mode can be activated easily by clicking on View in the top bar of Windows Explorer. That menu displays the current view mode with a bullet. Make sure it is not the List mode as you won’t see it then.
Scroll down to the “Arrange Icons By” submenu and click on the “Show in Groups” entry there. This should activate group mode in Windows Explorer as seen above. The view depends of course on the selected view mode, what you see above is the Tiles view mode.
Update: To activate group sorting in newer versions of Windows you need to right-click in the Explorer window and select “Group by” from the context menu to select a grouping option from the list of available ones. This actually can work on older versions of Windows as well. If you prefer to use the menu, press Alt to bring up the old menu bar and select View > Group By from the menu instead.
Grouping items in Windows Explorer can be useful to manage larger file folders more effectively as contents are now separated by the selected sorting criteria.