SORTING
THROUGH THE DOCUMENTS
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Business Computing Tips
By K&K Fainges kfainges@bigpond.net.au
Finding lost documents is a common question. We covered it in a past Ktips
- Finding lost Files.
But how do you handle all the other things you want to do with your files
(or documents)? There are ways to do this within a variety of programs but
today we are going to concentrate on Windows Explorer.
If you right click on the Start button on your desktop, (Windows 95 &
above), then left click on the word Explore, it will open up Windows Explorer.
This program has all the files in your computer down the left hand side, and
normally the files in your start menu on the right.
First thing to do is go up to the top. On the far right of the menu bar,
there is the word Views. Click on that a few times. With each click, the way
the files are displayed changes. They can be icons (or pictures), or be text
with different levels of information. You can find out details like file
size, the program used to make it, and last time it was used. Click on and
single file and the word Properties on the menu bar, and you can find out who
wrote it, the dates it was made, modified etc
To find particular Files, simply scroll up and down the list using the
scroll bar in the middle. (Click above it to make it go up one page, or below
it to go down. Click hold and drag it up and down for a quicker scroll.)
You will see a lot of yellow folders on the left hand side. They have
little plus signs next to some of them. This means there is another folder
inside that one. To see it, either double click on the folder to have the
contents open up over on the right hand side of the screen, or just click on
the plus sign to look at it on the left hand side.
To delete unwanted files, simply click on the file and hit Delete. (The
delete key on your keyboard works as well). To delete multiple files, click on
the first one, hold down the shift key on your keyboard, and click on the last
one. If you want a number of files, but they are not in order, hold down the
Ctrl key instead. This allows you to chose whatever files you like.
Moving files around is made a lot easier too. To copy a file to another
section, just click on it, hit copy on the menu bar and then find the new
place you want it to go on the left hand side. Click on that folder and hit
paste. If you get it wrong, don't panic, just hit Undo.
Saving a file to a disk is just the same, merely copy it into the A:
folder.
After a while, your documents can be a bit hard to find just because there
is so many of them. Just like a filing cabinet, you need to separate them out
into folders. To do that, first make a new folder by going to FILE=> NEW
=> FOLDER. A new folder will appear called New folder. You can rename it by
typing over the words new folder. Then you can move it just as you would any
file. Then just copy the files you want into it. Better yet, Cut and paste
them in and you will not end up with multiple copies of the same thing on your
hard disk.
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Please feel free to pass it on to your friends, just let them know I wrote
it.
Karen Fainges holds a Bachelor of Business, and a Grad. Cert of Vocational
and Educational Training. All this is nice but it's the 14 years of having to
make sales or starve that makes her think she has really learnt what does and
doesn't work. A tutor for all ages, she specialises in helping people get
started on the long road to technology.
"It has to be practical, it has to be cheap, and it has to work."
