Hello and welcome to another video in our HOW MCW series. My name is Matt Bauer and
this week I’ll be showing you some of the basics of file management in Windows.
This video will focus mainly on Folders – Folders are containers for files and other folders.
The folder icon represents a manila folder that you may find in an office. This is because
a folder on your computer is basically the virtual equivalent to a manila folder you
would find at the office. The files inside a folder on your computer are basically the
same thing as paper documents inside the manila folder in an office. The purpose of using
folders on your computer is the same as using them in your office: to group, organize, and
categorize your files. There are several ways to create a folder.
There may be a single button you can click, or you can right-click any empty space within
the window you wish to create the folder in, then click New -> Folder. If you have trouble
with either of these options, you can go to File -> New -> Folder. In all 3 cases, you
would then just type a name for the folder and hit Enter.
You can then click and drag the desired files into the folder you just created.
To open up that folder, simply double-click on it or right-click it and select Open.
You can view files and folders in different ways to help you do a number of things, such
as getting an overview of the contents or sorting by name or file size.
In Windows XP, while in a folder such as My Documents or My Pictures, either right-click
an empty space and go to View OR up at the top of the window, you can select View here.
In Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can right-click and select View,
or you can click on the View drop-down arrow, then click and drag this slider to the different
view settings, which will update automatically in the window.
No matter which version of Windows you’re using, you have at least 5 different options
for viewing your files. Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures,
so Thumbnails View is very useful in folders where pictures are stored as you can view
many pictures at once, which can help with sorting and organizing them into folders.
The Tiles and Icons views are very similar in that they both basically show icons at
different sizes. List View can save you a lot of space and
a lot of scrolling to find what you’re looking for. It minimizes the icons and arranges the
files in a list, one right after the other. This allows you to see many more files on
one page to quickly view the contents of the folder and find specific files faster.
Finally, Details View looks a lot like List View, except that it lists files only vertically
instead of both vertically and horizontally. However, this enables you to view file information
in columns as you see here. You can see file size, file type, and the last date it was
modified, as well as other details. You can also sort by these categories by clicking
the column name. An arrow may appear next to it pointing up or down. Up means the files
are shown in ascending order, and Down means the files are shown in descending order. For
example, you can sort files in alphabetical order or from smallest to largest file size.
It all depends on your preferences. I’ll cover more file management topics in
a future video, but if you have training ideas, please send your suggestions to training@mycomputerworks.com
or post them in the comments section below. If you’d like to subscribe to the My Computer
Works YouTube channel, simply click the SUBSCRIBE button to the right of any of our YouTube
video pages. If you’re not yet a My Computer Works customer, go ahead and visit our website,
mycomputerworks.com, or call the number you see below. My name is Matt Bauer, thanks so
much for watching, and we’ll see ya next time.