Laptops All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies- P18 pptx

Putting Everything in Its Place: Making and Using Folders 144 Putting Everything in Its Place: Making and Using Folders She’s got this huge pile on her desk. When it comes to the files on her com- puter . . . she wants to keep them on the Windows desktop, too: all 500,000 of them. Oh, the trials and tribulations of a modern high-tech marriage. The solution is to use folders and subfolders and sub-subfolders. Figure 4-4 shows just one example of how you could organize your system. In this par- ticular design, all files are kept inside folders and subfolders within a top-level folder (think of it as the file cabinet) called My Documents, which is one of the folders Windows automatically creates for you. One level down from My Documents are two major folders, one called Business Files and the other Personal Files. They hold, respectively, business files or personal files . . . but you figured that out already, right? Another level down, the business and personal files branch off again. On the business side, to folders dedicated to letters, financial matters, and (since my particular line of work involves publishing) manuscripts. On the personal side, folders are set up to hold private letters, financial documents, and digital audio and video. There’s no right and wrong way to organize your computer, and you can make the structure as simple or complex as you like. All that matters is that it makes sense to you . . . and that it gets the big pile of files off your desktop. Figure 4-3: The Windows XP registered file type system uses different terms but accomplish es the same tasks as the filename association window of Windows Vista. 13 140925-bk02ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 144 Book II Chapter 4 Managing Files, Folders, Extensions Exploring Pre-Assigned Folders: The Big Three 145 Exploring Pre-Assigned Folders: The Big Three The programmers at Microsoft really, really want you to get organized, too. That’s why they instructed Windows to create at least a basic structure to hold your files. You can use their scheme, adapt it more to your liking, or create your own. And many software applications install one or more special folders to hold files created with their program. Again, you don’t have to use their sug- gested locations, but if you choose to store files somewhere other than the default location, make sure you keep track of where you place them. These three top-level basic folders are automatically created by Windows XP. My Computer Windows also sets up subfolders called Shared Documents (for files you identify as ones you want available to others on a network) and Insert Your Name Here’s Documents. (It’s not really called Insert Your Name Here; the computer creates a subfolder for each user account and places that person’s name on the folder.) If your laptop has only one user account, then this folder is just for you. If you allow the kids (why, oh why?) to use your laptop, be sure to set up a user account for them. Not only will it help keep any files they create separate from your own, but it also permits you to create different themes and settings for each user. That is, unless you want to come to the board room with your annual financial planning presentation and let the CEO see that your laptop’s desktop has a huge, pulsing picture of SpongeBob SquarePants. My Documents Business Files Personal Files Manuscripts Letters Financial Digital Media Letters Family Social Financial Bank Insurance Photos Music Figure 4-4: An organization al scheme for files for a user who stores both business and personal data on a single laptop. 13 140925-bk02ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 145 Exploring Pre-Assigned Folders: The Big Three 146 My Computer (on Windows XP systems) or Computer (on Windows Vista machines) also includes icons that represent storage devices such as the hard disk drives and any attached external devices. If you burrow down into the list of devices, you gain access to the folders they hold. My Documents You can customize to add subfolders galore to this general top-level folder. Windows automatically creates subfolders including My Music, My Videos, and My Pictures. (And I bet you can guess the intended contents of each of those subfolders.) If these folder names make sense to you, leave them unchanged; many programs automatically dispatch files to those folders, even if you prefer to keep them somewhere else. On my system, I add subfolders to distinguish between files I declare In Progress, Completed Assignments, and Archives. Once I finish a particular job and ship it to a publisher or a client, I move it from In Progress to Completed Assignments where it sits happily for a few weeks or months or even years until I’m certain that I don’t need to do anything more with it. Then I move it to Archives where it just sits. The advantage of a three-stage process like mine? Organization and tracking. I can easily find projects that I need to finish, and then I can readily find older projects if I need to change them or recycle parts for other purposes. And finally, I can easily copy Archives files to DVD or to one of my several external hard disk drives for deep, deep storage. (Trust me, you never know when some situation will arise where you find that you need to look at a file you created ten years ago. Go to the archives . . . .) My Network Places Okay, this one isn’t really a folder. At least, it isn’t one located on your laptop. This listing is any location on a local area network (LAN) available to you. Permission can be granted to read files only, or to write new or modi- fied files to that location. (Network places can connected by Ethernet wires, available on a WiFi wireless network, or even locations available somewhere out there on the Internet.) Windows Vista has a similar but not quite identical set of folders. The most current OS automatically creates the same group of folders for each user. The top level folder is the User Account folder, and is named . . . for the user. Thus, there is a folder called Corey and within that folder the OS creates these subfolders: ✦ Contacts. Any time you use the Windows Vista Mail program, the e-mail address and other details of anyone you correspond with are added to an address book here. Certain other applications, from Microsoft or 13 140925-bk02ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 146 Book II Chapter 4 Managing Files, Folders, Extensions Exploring Pre-Assigned Folders: The Big Three 147 other software companies, may also use this folder to hold information, settings, and other details of your electronic correspondence. The creatively named Mail is a replacement for Outlook Express, which was part of most earlier versions of Windows. ✦ Desktop. Although your laptop’s desktop looks as if it is one big spread- out place, actually all of its documents, shortcuts, and subfolders live within this top-level folder. ✦ Documents. This is where your (say it along with me) documents are supposed to go. You can (and should) create all sorts of subfolders within this folder to help you organize your stuff. Because each user account has its own Documents folder within Windows Vista, you can keep others from viewing, changing, copying, or deleting your documents. All you need to do is to apply a password to your user account. ✦ Downloads. The default location for files brought to your laptop from the Internet is here, which makes them easy to find and manage. However, some web sites may insist on placing their downloads on the desktop or elsewhere on your computer; in addition, you may be able to Save As and place a download somewhere that is especially pleasing or logical to you. ✦ Favorites. Here Internet Explorer (the browser that helps you find, display, and interact with web sites) can store places you’ve visited and to which you hope to return. The favorites are listed on a menu within Internet Explorer, but stored here. (And because Windows allows you to open a file with a program, or a program with a file, you can go directly to a favorite site by double-clicking an icon or filename listed in this folder.) ✦ Links. One of the sorta-kinda new features of Windows Vista is the Navigation Pane on the left side of folders. It displays a list of your most frequently used folders and items. The upper part of the pane lists links to folders you use often; the lower half allows you to pop open the con- tents of those folders to display them in a branching tree format. (The broadest folder is atop the tree, and the various folders and subfolders beneath it spread out like thinner and more distant roots.) ✦ Music. Any digital tracks copied from CDs using the Windows Media Player are ordinarily stored here, in a folder after the CD’s title (if the maker of the CD labeled the disc properly). Some other audio programs — music players as well as editors — may also use this folder to store tracks. ✦ Pictures. Are you getting the picture here, yet? Yup, this folder is the official place to store digital images from your digital camera, a scanner, screen captures from a web site, or from your own computer. Many digi- tal editing programs seek out this folder for image placement unless you instruct them otherwise. On my machine, I add several layers of subfold- ers to divide the thousands of digital photos. I’ve got a folder called 13 140925-bk02ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 147 Exploring Pre-Assigned Folders: The Big Three 148 Europe, for example, and below that are individual folders for countries, and one layer down the folders are identified by month and date. ✦ Saved Games. You’re much too busy to waste time on games; there’s work to be done. Spreadsheets, word processing, e-mail, Minesweeper, Spider Solitaire, FreeCell. Those last three aren’t games, boss: They’re mental exercises to keep me sharp and creative. So when you do play one of the games offered by Windows Vista, the OS stores any saved in- progress sessions as well as high scores and settings here. And some other games you install on your own may use this folder to store saved sessions. Or so I’m told. ✦ Searches. If you use the facilities within Windows Vista to search the files within your laptop, the saved results of that inquiry are stored here. Certain other third-party search utilities may also use this folder. ✦ Videos. Downloaded videos from the Internet or from a camcorder are ordinarily placed here. You can add subfolders to manage different types of files: for example family, travel, and “none of your business.” Many software programs insist on placing files you create in the folders that made sense to the programmers. However, in most programs you can change the default location for files. Check the Options menu from within the program. Another way to manually instruct a program to place a file in a particular place is to use the Save As command. Save As is a command with its roots all the way back to the early days of computing, which explains its somewhat less-than-obvious name. When you tell the computer to Save As, you’re going around any automatic settings for the program. In the instance of a word- processing program, you can ✦ Save the file under a name other than one the program automatically generates. ✦ Save an additional copy of the file under a new name. ✦ Save an original version of the file in a folder other than the default. This includes folders on your machine or, if your laptop is connected over a LAN, on another machine. (You must be granted permission to access to folders on networked computers.) ✦ Save a copy in a folder other than the default. ✦ Save the file in a format other than the program’s standard. You can explore some of these options in more detail in Book IV about office software. 13 140925-bk02ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 148 Book II Chapter 4 Managing Files, Folders, Extensions Digging into a Folder 149 Digging into a Folder It’s all done with a flick of the finger: point to a folder and double-click it to open it and examine its contents. Do the same to open a subfolder. Or, if you’d prefer a slightly less aggressive method, point to a folder and give a gentle touch to the right mouse button. Then select Open from the menu that appears. Want yet another way to get to a file? Every Windows program ties into the operating system’s file index through the Open command. Most work like this: If you open the program and then seek to open a file, the Open com- mand takes you to whichever folder has been identified as the default “look here first” folder. You can browse from there to any other folder on the machine. And you can change the default folder from within the program by going to its Options menu. If you click Open from within most Windows programs after saving or open- ing a file, the folder you see is where the most recently used file is located. Again, you can navigate from that location to anywhere else on the machine. Seeing what you see When you open a folder you see a list of files as well as any subfolders placed within. That’s about all I can tell you in general terms, because Windows allows you a tremendous amount of display customization. To begin with, you can show the contents of a folder as follows: ✦ List. This is the simplest and is just what promises: a list of files and sub- folders. You see the filenames and folder names, accompanied by what- ever icon or symbol you or the program associate with it. ✦ Details. The same list, but this time presented with a great deal more information — as customized by you. For example, in addition to file- names and folder names, you can see the size of individual files (indi- cated in KB, meaning thousands of bytes). Other available information includes Type (such as File Folder, Microsoft Office Word file, Microsoft MapPoint map, or Adobe Acrobat Document), Date Created, Date Modified, Date Accessed, and much more. In Windows Vista you can add Tags to files to describe a file’s contents. Tags are particularly useful with digital image, music, or video files. You can add a few words to describe a digital camera picture (for example NEIL, LAMPSHADE, NEW YEAR). Years later, when you want to find that picture of Uncle Neil with the lampshade on his head you can search for any of those words and come up with a list of images that fit the bill. 13 140925-bk02ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 149 Digging into a Folder 150 ✦ Icons. Since you’re working in a gooey GUI, it is appropriate that soft- ware designers stick symbols alongside the words that name a file or a folder; I’m talking about icons. The icons are automatically applied to files because of the filename extension. Any software maker who plays by the official Windows rules can instruct the OS to display a custom icon for certain file types. That’s why you see a small picture of a printed sheet of paper with a W to indicate a Microsoft Word file, or a musical note for an MP3 audio file. You can also personally select a little icon for folders (for example, a tiny camera to indicate pictures, a miniature projection screen to hold PowerPoint presentations, a small group of miniature people to tell you that family matters are within). Icons also identify programs (or desktop shortcuts that lead to their location on your disk), and clicking them can launch the program. ✦ Tiles. If you know exactly what you’re looking for (and have customized the heck out of your personal folders), you can look at a folder’s con- tents as tiles: just the icons (a bit larger than in the regular view). Click any one of them to open the subfolder. (And just to be nice, if you hover your mouse over a tiled icon, a little screen tells you the nature and size of the folder or the file, and in the case of the file you learn the date it was last modified.) ✦ Thumbnails. And now for the really big show. (This would have been Ed Sullivan’s favorite; if you don’t know who he was, ask the nearest geezer.) Instruct the system to show you a folder’s contents as thumb- nails, which are really big icons. Plus, any images — digital photographs, scans, PDFs — appear as small versions of themselves. Switching to thumbnail view is a great way to quickly examine your photos. Open a folder’s thumbnail by clicking it; clicking a file’s thumbnail opens the file within the software program with which it’s associated. Giving your folder a makeover To select any of the available viewing options within an open folder, click the View menu and then use your mouse to select one of the available options: Thumbnails, Tiles, Icons, List, or Details. That’s all there is to it. Now, if you want to customize a particular folder’s appearance, the process is also simple, but requires a few extra steps. If you’re running Windows XP (Windows Vista is similar enough that you can figure it out from these instructions), here’s how to assign an interesting, eye-catching, or meaning- ful icon to a folder: 1. Click the current icon for a folder to highlight it, then right-click the folder. 13 140925-bk02ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 150 Book II Chapter 4 Managing Files, Folders, Extensions Digging into a Folder 151 2. Select Properties. The Properties dialog appears. 3. Click the Customize tab. 4. Under Folder Icons, click Change Icon. Wow, that’s a lot of icons to choose from. Windows comes supplied with several dozen little pictures, and some programs add their own to the system. You can also download or purchase icons from designers; if you download one from the Internet make sure you’re dealing with a rep- utable source to avoid viruses. 5. Select the icon you want and click OK. Back at the Properties page you see some other options, including the kind offer to use this folder type as a template for other folders. You can experiment here or (as I do) individually assign icons as I need them. 6. Choose steps based on your decision: • Click Apply to assign the icon if you want to stay on the Properties page and do other things. • Click OK to assign the icon and close the dialog. Renaming your folder or file As you’re probably beginning to figure out by now, you can usually accom- plish a particular task under Windows two or three different ways. The OS designers tried to anticipate different types of users and different types of situations. Here, then, are three ways to change the name of a file or a folder: ✦ Click the current icon for a folder or a file to highlight it. Click a second time on the box containing the filename to highlight characters. Type in a new name and press the Enter key to accept it. ✦ Click the icon for a folder or file to highlight. Then right-click. From the menu that appears, chose Rename and give it a new name. ✦ Click the icon for a folder or file to highlight. Then right-click. From the menu that appears, chose Properties. In the upper part of the box you see a box with the current filename; click in the box and change the name. You can also change a filename from within a program by using the Save As command and inserting a different name; if you take this route, you end up with a copy of the file. You can keep both, or you can go in and delete one or the other version. 13 140925-bk02ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 151 Being Wary of the Metadata 152 Moving on up Sometimes you put something in the wrong place. Or the darned machine goes and stores a file or makes a folder somewhere other than where you want it. Before you change the machine, try moving the file or folder. And yes, you have multiple ways to do this: ✦ Open the folder where you want to move the file or subfolder. Then locate the folder or file you want to move. With both windows open (source and destination), click and drag the file you want to move. When the icon is where you want it, release the button. It’s there! ✦ Locate the folder that holds the file or subfolder you want to move and highlight the item you want. On the left side of the folder is a set of File and Folder Tasks and, wouldn’t you know it, one that offers Move This File. You’re shown a complete listing of top-level folders where you can move the item. Being Wary of the Metadata In case you thought your personal work on your computer was personal, consider this: The system tracks when a file is first created, most recently modified, and most recently looked at (accessed), even if nothing was changed. The program records the user who created the file as well as anyone else who made comments on the file, and the comments themselves are tracked. It also records the total amount of time spent with a particular file open and the number of times it was worked on. This information is called metadata (info about info, you know) and is silently inserted into your file every time you open, save, or close it. Does metadata sound like something that might become of interest to an attorney in a lawsuit, or a detective, or a government agency? “You claim you never sent a stock tip to your friends and relatives before March 1? How, then, can you explain the following . . .?” With the advent of Office 2007, Microsoft took a partial step back from edge of Big Brotherdom. It’s called the Document Inspector, and you can scrub your files of any metadata you’d rather not share through the Prepare menu. Here’s the drill: 1. Click Microsoft Office Button ➪Prepare ➪Inspect Document. The Document Inspector dialog opens. 13 140925-bk02ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 152 Book II Chapter 4 Managing Files, Folders, Extensions Being Wary of the Metadata 153 2. Select the check boxes to instruct the program what to look for. 3. Click Inspect and review the results 4. Click Remove All to scrub the file. 5. Save the file either as an original or as a copy. I say Document Inspector is a partial step back because it helps you create a “clean” file that you can e-mail or otherwise send to another user. This process doesn’t necessarily remove all the information that may be con- tained in the original file on your hard disk, any backups you have made, and any earlier versions that might be scattered about anywhere else. 13 140925-bk02ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:37 PM Page 153 . and Using Folders She’s got this huge pile on her desk. When it comes to the files on her com- puter . . . she wants to keep them on the Windows desktop, too: all 500,000 of them. Oh, the trials. the computer creates a subfolder for each user account and places that person’s name on the folder.) If your laptop has only one user account, then this folder is just for you. If you allow the kids. set up a user account for them. Not only will it help keep any files they create separate from your own, but it also permits you to create different themes and settings for each user. That is,