Windows File Management
Windows users can be quite adept at what they do and the applications they do it with and still have little or no knowledge what Windows or their applications have done with the files they create. No matter how well you know the applications you use at some point you will need to know something about file management to retrieve, transfer, copy, replace, rename or backup your files. A brief overview of the features available in "Windows Explorer" will enable you to accomplish the tasks of file and folder management.
You can access the Windows Explorer window using "My Computer" from its desktop icon or by going to "Start" then clicking "My Computer" in the menu. When it opens you will see a "Folders" button which, when clicked, will cause drives, directories and networks to display in the left window pane. Alternately, right-click on My Computer and select "Explore" for the popup menu to arrive at the same view. In both cases you will get a window similar to the image below.
The left pane can be thought of as a directory tree that you can expand by clicking on the "+" icon before any directory object. When you select any of the objects, be that a drive or folder, its contents will appear in the right window pane. You can change how the contents will appear in the right pane using the "View" menu. Your options are Thumbnails, Tiles, Icons, List or Details. Each has benefits depending on what you are trying to view.
The Thumbnails view is excellent for for browsing through pictures. When looking for files in a directory by name, size, file type or date modified you'll want to use the details view. These are the file properties shown by default. You can display additional properties such as author, date crated, attributes and more by simply right clicking on the title bar and selecting those you would like to include. Click on one of those displayed and the list of files will be sorted by that file property.
In general, you will find these two views to be the most useful for identifying files and performing operations on them. The "Icon" and "Tiles" views show icons in different sizes and orders. Now we can move on to using Explorer to organizing files and folders.
Creating A New Folder
Creating custom folders allows you to organize your data just as you would in a filing cabinet. It can also make it a great deal more convenient to administer backups. Say you wanted to organize other folders for you business in one place in a subdirectory of your "C" drive. Simply select the drive in Explorer and click New -> Folder from the menu bar or right click on the drive and use New -> folder from there. You will see a folder with the default name "New Folder" where you can now type "Business". You can now create sub-folders for that directory such as "Customers," "Sales" or the like that suites your objectives. If your computer has multiple users you may want to make that new directory a subdirectory of "My Documents" in your user account where only you would have access.
Moving, Copying, Renaming and Deleting Items...
Now that you have a "Business" directory you can move the business plan of yours out of "My Documents," where just about every document you create is stored by default, to separate it from your personal documents. Simply go to the directory where the file, or files, you want to move is located, select the item in the right pane and from the menu Edit->Cut. Then navigate to the destination directory and Edit->Paste. Alternately, you can right click on the item and perform the Cut / Paste functions from the shortcut menu. Copying items is done in the same manner except you use "Copy" rather than Cut in the menus. You can also use keyboard shortcuts for these commands: Cut = "Ctrl+X"; Paste = "Ctrl+V"; Copy = "Ctrl+C".
When renaming files or folders you navigate to them in the same manner. Select your target file or folder then use the Edit menu or right click the items and follow with "Rename." The items name will appear selected and ready to edit. Be careful here as Windows will not allow a duplicate name for a file or folder in the same directory.
Deleting items is much the same in terms of navigation and menu except you chose "Delete" from the menu or simply hit the "Delete" key on your keyboard. Windows sends the deleted items to the "Recycle Bin" unless the items exceed 10% of your hard drive. The Recycle Bin gives you an opportunity to undue the action should you delete something by mistake. In that case, open the Recycle Bin and either move individual items to the directory of your choice or select the item and click restore to undue the delete.
Windows allows you to drag files to accomplish some of these tasks but can have different results depending on the location of the files and such. For now safely use the methods described above. Understanding the directory tree will also help you control files from within the applications you use. If, for example, you created a new business document in Word Perfect and wanted to save it to the Business directory instead of My Documents you would choose "Save As" rather than "Save" and navigate to that directory. Subsequently, "Save" will automatically save revisions to the directory that document was originally saved to. For additional help you can search Windows help for "File Management" or "Explorer."
