[Tip] Give Browse Dialog Box More Space in Windows Vista and Later

Its time for sharing an interesting thing, which I found today.

As we all know “Dialog boxes” don’t contain Maximize, Minimize buttons. They only have “Close” button and we can’t maximize them. If we right-click on the titlebar of a dialog box, we get only 2 options in context menu:

Move
Close

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But for my surprise, when I opened “Browse” dialog box in RUN, I found that it can be maximized even its a dialog box. If you double-click on its titlebar, it’ll be maximized. (But not fully maximized, the border will still be visible). Also you’ll get an option “Maximize” in context menu of titlebar.

Maximize_Option_Dialog_Box.png

So its an interesting thing in Windows Vista and later. I think since Browse dialog box looks similar to Windows Explorer and has same properties, that’s why it can be maximized irrespective of other dialog boxes.

PS: It happens for all Browse/Save/Open dialog boxes in all windows applications, like Notepad, etc.

Published in: Windows 7, Windows Vista

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

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  1. Wow, thanks for the tip! I have been going c.zy because in Wordpad the file dialog suddenly started ALWAYS opening maximized and I couldn’t figure out how to get it back to the way I like it: a window that does NOT take up the whole screen. I like to be able to re-size it at any time. But although resizing arrows would appear at the left and right borders, they did not work at all.

    It just bugged me that when I wanted to open a file it took the whole screen.

    Then I got the tip to double click the title bar, and magically the dialog went back to how I like it! Now I know what to do if it ever happens again. Thank you all for restoring my peace of mind!

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