I would have thought this should be available from the admin but I cant find it anywhere and google is also shrugging it's shoulders.
The problem I am having is that zen cart seems to switch to a list view layout at certain times, particularly if there are only a couple of items in its current category/view. I want to make sure this never happens... grid view all the way.
I'm thinking take everything out of the grid view template and paste it into list view template but I think this might cause other problems and I want to minimise the number of files I mess with so if i can do this from the admin it would be much better.
Does anyone know the best way to achieve this?
In a default uncustomized install of Zen Cart v1.5.1 or older, there is a grid layout when looking at parent categories which contain subcategories (the subcategories are displayed in a grid), and any of the "centerboxes" such as New Products This Month and Featured Products and On Special will also show their limited random entries in a grid format. Products never show in a grid. They always show in rows, whether they're in a listing inside a particular category or in search results or in a broader list such as "All Products".
There is an addon for changing the product-listing format to show in a grid, and another addon that allows grid/row selection by the customer while at the same time letting the customer choose how many items per page they wish to see. One of those should meet the needs as you described, unless there's something missing in your description.