Understanding The Differences between Folders and Files

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Understanding The Differences between Folders and Files

      A computer fundamental is that everything on your hard drive is either a file or a folder. Folders are normally indicated by icons resembling a yellow manila folder. Files are everything else, including photos, MP3s, documents, and executable files of various kinds.

     To keep things organized, files are located inside folders, which in turn may be located inside other folders.

     I mention this because many readers send emails saying "I put some new photos in a file, but now I can't find the file." Well, understanding folders and their properties goes a long way toward being the master of managing and maintaining your PC.

     Windows comes with a few pre-established folders such as "My Documents" and "My Pictures," which are the default locations for your text files and graphic files, respectively. However, you can create your own folders, name them, and put files and/or other folders inside them.

Creating Your Own Special Folders

     To create a new folder on your Desktop, right-click it and choose New>Folder. To create one inside another folder, click File>New>Folder.

     To move a file into a folder or a folder into a folder, simply drag and drop them into your target folder.

     Even your Desktop is actually a folder. You can find its hierarchal location by clicking Start>Search>All Files & Folders, and typing "Desktop" into the Name field.



     It's not uncommon with today's huge hard drives to have thousands of files and folders on them. So how do you keep your most important ones easily accessible? You create Shortcuts to them. Let's say you have a folder named "Mom's Recipes" that is buried deep inside a few other folders.

     Find the folder by doing "Start>Search" as described above. When you locate it, right-click it and choose Send To>Desktop (create Shortcut).

     An icon will appear on your Desktop named "Shortcut to Mom's Recipes," which, when double-clicked will immediately open the recipe folder. Furthermore, if you want to drag more recipes into the folder you can simply drag them onto the Desktop icon. However, if you delete this icon, only the icon will be gone — the recipe folder will still be in existence.

     It's also not uncommon to place so many files inside a folder that finding a particular one can still be difficult. If you know its name (or partial name) right-click the folder's Desktop icon and choose Search.

     Inside a folder there are many ways to arrange your files that can make them more manageable. For instance, you can list them by name, by size, or by creation date, along with choosing from among other arrangement options.

     Here's how this might come in handy: suppose you added a new photo to a folder and subsequently forget the picture's name. How would you find it easily among, say, hundreds of others? Well, click on View>Details. This will list the photos alphabetically by name, along with showing other properties such and size and date modified.

     Now click on View>Arrange Icons By>Modified, and your picture will jump to the top of the list.

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