What happened to the infamous ignore_my_docs in WM5?

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(Note that if you’ve never heard of ignore_my_docs, you can safely skip this article. It’s only meant for users of previous Windows Mobile operating systems that would like to know whether ignore_my_docs is still in effect.)

There is still a lot of confusion caused by ignore_my_docs explained for example in THIS (this is the most important article!), THIS and THIS threads / articles.

WM5 (and, of course, all subsequent operating system versions), finally, got rid of this, for several Windows Mobile users, pretty confusing feature as is explained for example HERE or HERE.

In a nutshell: WM5+ is different from how earlier OS versions behaved if and only if they also contained an ignore_my_docs file in the root of the card and also a \My Documents directory. In this case, only the contents of \My Documents (and ALL its subdirs) were accessible, nothing else on the card. An example screenshot of my WM2003 HP iPAQ 2210 showing this in effect is in HERE (with removed ignore_my_docs) and HERE (with present ignore_my_docs). As you can see, in the former case, the content of the other directories on the card aren’t listed, only those of \My Documents on it (and, incidentally, all its subdirs – as opposed to the case of WM5+, where this is no longer the case).

All in all, under WM5 and later operating systems, it doesn’t make any difference whether there’s an ignore_my_docs file in the root of a storage card or not: the standard file dialog will see all directories - one directory deep. The latter also applies to \My Documents, unfortunately, as has also been explained HERE. This problem still hasn't been fixed.