Mastering dired would greatly improve your efficiency. If you think about it, the first step of work is usually browsing files or folder. But then is it possible to open them with the default application in Windows?

The following answer from Stack Overflow sent me to dired+

  1. You are apparently using MS Windows. If so, see section If You Use Emacs on MS Windows of the Dired+ doc. It explains how to use Windows file associations in Dired. In a nutshell, loading library w32-browser.el lets you use M-RET (command dired-w32-browser) to open a file or directory in a Dired listing using its Windows-associated application. You can also use mouse-3 and choose menu item Open Associated Windows App, or use the same menu item in menu-bar menu Single. (C-RET opens Windows Explorer for the file or dir.). If you want to use the Windows-associated app when you hit RET then just bind dired-w32-browser to RET. I use RET for the usual Emacs behavior and M-RET for the Windows app, but you can bind the commands to any keys you like (in dired-mode-map, of course).
  2. More generally (all platforms, including MS Windows), you can use option dired-guess-shell-alist-user to define default applications for acting on files in Dired using ! and similar commands. This is not special to Dired+. It is available by loading standard library dired-x.el (which is loaded automatically by Dired+).

Getting Dired+

I don’t know if there is an easier method but this is the method I followed.

  1. First you’ll notice that it’s not available with M-x list-packages. It’s on the emacswiki.
  2. In order to install it, you can download it and place it in ~/emacs.d and add this folder to load-path
  3. Since I might be doing this with other packages, however, there is a tool called el-get that takes care of downloading code from emacswiki
  4. el-get is available from M-x list-packages. Install it, and install w32-browser with it
  5. M-x el-get- build emacswiki local recipes (making and index of elisp files on emacswiki)
  6. Now use el-get-list-packages to install dired+
  7. Add the following code to ~/.emacs
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/el-get/dired+/") ;; making dired+ executable
(require 'w32-browser)
(require 'dired+)

Now you can enjoy life. Make a list or a table of your favorite folders and browse to them with dired+, then use M-x to open them outside emacs if needed.

e.g.

| file        | location         |
|-------------|------------------|
| Home Folder | [[~/]]           |
| Documents   | [[~/Documents/]] |