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Work with files and folders in Windows

Last modified: 2012-04-20 21:46:12 EEST

In Windows XP, Common Tasks pane lists typical actions related to selected file(s) or folder(s) and less common tasks are accessible via menus.
In Windows Vista and 7, however, Common Tasks pane is gone. Some actions appear under Organize menu and toolbar, all other tasks are accessible via menus that are hidden by default. As in all newer Microsoft programs, you can display full menus by pressing ALT key once.

You can almost always undo your last action (copy, move, rename, delete) just by pressing CTRL+Z on your keyboard or by opening Edit or Organize menu and selecting Undo.

Selecting files and folders

You can select one item by clicking on it once. You can also navigate using arrow keys on keyboard.

If you want to select multiple consecutive items, click on the first item, then press and hold down SHIFT key on your keyboard and click on the last item. When finished, release the SHIFT key.
You can also select multiple consecutive items by holding down mouse's left button, moving mouse pointer over items and then releasing mouse button. During selecting, a transparent box for selection area is being displayed.

If you want to select multiple items that are not consecutive, click on the first item, then press and hold down CTRL key on your keyboard and click on other items you want to select. If you selected a wrong item, click on it again to deselect it. When finished, release the CTRL key.
In case you have only keyboard available, hold down Ctrl key, navigate with arrow keys and use Space to select/deselect items.

If you want to select all items in folder contents, press CTRL+A on your keyboard or open Edit or Organize menu and click Select All.
 

If you want to select almost all items, excluding only a few in a folder, select those few items you want to be excluded. In Windows Vista and 7, press Alt key once to display full menus. Then open Edit menu and click Invert Selection. Quite helpful, right? 
 

Changing folder views

If you want to change folder view type, click on View button in folder toolbar and select the view you want. In Windows Vista and 7, you can also change views by holding down CTRL key on your keyboard and scrolling mouse wheel.
 

Sorting, grouping and filtering files and folders

If you are using Details view for folders, all you have to do is click on a column name (e.g. Name, Size, Type, etc). The column that the folder is sorted by is indicated with a small arrowhead above column name. If the arrowhead points up, the column is sorted in ascending order, if the arrowhead points down, the column is sorted in descending order. You can toggle it just by clicking on the column name again.

If you are using some other view, right-click on an empty area (not on files or folders) of the folder, select Arrange Icons By (Windows XP) or Sort By (Windows Vista and 7) and then click on the sorting basis you like - Name, Size, etc.
Windows XP allows sorting in ascending order only (except when in Details view). Windows Vista and 7 allow selecting sort order.
 

In Windows XP, you can choose the Auto Arrange option to keep items aligned to grid automatically. Newer versions of Windows do this by default.

In Windows 7, there is Arrange by: button available for easy sorting. This allows only ascending sort order, but it is readily available in the right corner of Explorer window.
 

Grouping files and folders

In case the folder contains very many items, it might make sense to use grouping for better overview and finding items.

In Windows XP, right-click on an empty area of folder, select Arrange Icons By and click Show In Groups. Sorting is not available.
In Windows Vista and 7, right-click on an empty area of folder, select Group by and then click the grouping basis you need. You can also choose to sort the grouped items in Ascending or Descending order.

To remove grouping, click Show In Groups again (Windows XP) or select (None) from the Group by list (Windows Vista and 7).

Here is a folder with items grouped by name:

Filtering files and folders

Filtering is available in Windows Vista and 7 only; and it makes finding items even quicker - you select the criterion or criteria for displaying only the items you need to see. You can use filtering only when column names are visible.
A small arrowhead pointing down appears on the right of a column name while you're hovering mouse pointer over it. Click the arrowhead and use check boxes to select the criteria you need. The items will be filtered right away. Click elsewhere in folder window to hide filtering check boxes.

A check mark appears on the right side of each column with filter in effect. To clear or change a filter, click the check mark and clear or change check boxes.

Creating files and folders

To create a file or folder, right-click on an empty area of the folder, select New and choose what you want to create. In this example, I'll create a new folder.

A new folder, first called just "New Folder" appears. Type in the name you want and then press ENTER key on your keyboard.

Renaming files and folders

If you want to rename a file or folder, click on it once and press F2 key on your keyboard or open File or Organize menu and select Rename (press Alt key first in Windows Vista and 7). In Windows XP, you can also click Rename this file or Rename this folder in Common Tasks pane. 
 

There is a very important step about renaming files (not folders) - every file has an extension that defines its type. This extension usually consists of a dot and three letters. Extension is always the very last part of a file name. So ".jpg" indicates a JPEG image file, ".doc" indicates a Microsoft Word document, etc.
In Windows XP, full name (including extension) is selected; Windows Vista and 7 select only file name without its extension.
Please do not change the file extension unless you really know what you are doing!

As folders do not have extensions, just type in the new name and press ENTER key on your keyboard.

In Windows XP, click before the dot, hold down BACKSPACE key on your keyboard to delete the file name without changing its extension, type in the new name and press ENTER on your keyboard.
In Windows Vista and 7, just type a new name and press Enter.
 

To rename multiple consequtive files using keyboard, use TAB key without pressing ENTER. First press F2, type a new name for the file and then press TAB to move on to the next file; SHIFT+TAB will move back to previous file. You should press ENTER only after you've finished renaming the last file.

If you accidentally deleted or changed file's extension, Windows will notify you about it. Click No and try again.

Remember, you can always undo your last action by pressing CTRL+Z on your keyboard!

Copying and moving files and folders

The most common way for copying files and folders is to select these, press Ctrl+C to copy the items, go to the destination folder and press Ctrl+V to paste the items. To move items, use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+X to cut the items and then, in destination folder, press Ctrl+V to paste the items.

In Windows XP, Common Tasks pane on the left side of a folder has Copy this file, Move this file, Copy this folder and Move this folder commands for single items and Copy the selected items and Move the selected items command for multiple selected items.
 

In Windows Vista and 7 (and Windows XP without Common Tasks pane), open Edit menu (press Alt key first in Windows Vista and 7) and click Copy To Folder... or Move To Folder...:
 

Then a dialog box opens, select the folder you want to copy or move selected item(s) to and then click the Copy or Move button accordingly.
You can also make a new folder for the items by clicking the Make New Folder button, typing in a name for the new folder and pressing ENTER key on your keyboard. Then click Copy or Move.

In case a file or folder with that name already exists in the destination folder, you will be prompted about replacing it.

In Windows XP, the Confirm File Replace dialog appears for every item that already exists in the destination folder. There is size and modification date for the file already existing in the destination folder and also size and modification date for the file you want to copy or move. Make sure you are replacing a correct file or folder!
Click Yes to replace, No to keep the existing file or folder. 

In Windows Vista and 7, there are details for the file already existing in the destination folder under Don't copy button and details for the file you want to copy or move under Copy and Replace button. Make sure you are replacing a correct file!
Click Copy and Replace to replace the item, Don't copy to keep the existing file or Copy, but keep both files to create a file with the same name, but with " (1)" added to the end of its name for later comparison.

If there are multiple file name conflicts, there is also an option to repeat the selected action for every conflict. Click to check the Do this for the next <number> conflicts check box and then click the desired action button.
You can stop the copying or moving process completely by clicking the Cancel button.

In case a folder with that name already exists in the destination folder, you will be prompted about merging folder contents. There are details for both folders.
Click Yes to merge folders and see prompts for overwriting files, or No to skip the folder contents completely.

You can always undo your last copy or move action by pressing CTRL+Z on your keyboard or by opening Edit menu and clicking Undo Copy or Undo Move.

Deleting files and folders

To delete a file or folder, click to select it and press DELETE (or DEL) key on your keyboard.
You can also open File (in Windows XP) or Organize (in Windows Vista and 7) menu and click Delete.
In Windows XP, you can also click Delete this file or Delete this folder in Common Tasks pane.
 

A warning dialog appears, click Yes to delete the file or folder.

If you want to delete multiple items at once, select them and press DELETE key on your keyboard.
You can also open File menu and click Delete.
In Windows XP, the Delete the selected items command is available in Common Tasks pane.

Again, click Yes to confirm the action.

Please note that these files or folders will be moved to Recycle Bin after clicking Yes. Recycle Bin is a place where deleted items reside for a while (for days or even months, depending on the size of free space on your computer's hard disk) for easy restoration. When Recycle Bin gets full and new items are deleted, the oldest items in Recycle Bin will be permanently deleted and there is no easy way of restoring them.

You can use keyboard shortcut CTRL+Z to undo the deletion or open Recycle Bin to restore the deleted items. Read more about Recycle Bin in next section of this article.

In case you want to permanently delete something (without moving it to Recycle Bin first), press SHIFT+DELETE on your keyboard. But be very careful with that - you cannot recover the item(s) easily!

Using Recycle Bin

Recycle Bin is a place where deleted items reside for a while (for days or even months, depending on your hard disk size and free space on it) for easy restoration. The files in Recycle Bin are kept safe from overwriting although the disk space used by them is marked as free (so that you can see the correct amount of free disk space in My Computer).
When Recycle Bin gets full and new items are deleted, the oldest items in Recycle Bin will be permanently deleted to make enough room for the new ones and there is no easy way of restoring these items.

To open Recycle Bin, double-click its icon on Desktop.

You can also access Recycle Bin from any open Windows Explorer window.
In Windows XP, click on the down arrow on the right side of Address Bar and find Recycle Bin in the bottom of the list. You can also click Folders button to open folder hierarchy and select Recycle Bin from there, but this action hides Common Tasks pane.

In Windows Vista and 7, click on the down arrowhead after the first icon in Address Bar and click Recycle Bin in the jump list.

Recycle Bin acts as any other folder, so you can select items, change views, grouping and sorting as in other folders. You can also undo the last action by pressing CTRL+Z on your keyboard or by opening File or Organize menu and clicking Undo.

To restore items, select these, right-click on a selected item and click Restore. The items will be restored to the location they were deleted from and they will disappear from Recycle Bin.

To restore all items, click Restore all items in Common Tasks pane (Windows XP) or on Toolbar (Windows Vista and 7). Make sure no item is selected to see this command.
Alternatively, use keyboard shortcut CTRL+A to select all items. In Windows XP, open File menu and click Restore. In Windows Vista and 7, click the Restore the selected items button on Toolbar.
 

To permanently delete all items from Recycle Bin and your computer, click Empty the Recycle Bin in Common Tasks Pane (Windows XP) or on Toolbar (Windows Vista and 7).
The command is also available in File / Organize menu - but make sure no items are selected!

You can also right-click on Recycle Bin icon on Desktop and select Empty Recycle Bin.

Working with compressed (zipped) folders

Compressing files or folders can save hard disk space or allow sending multiple items by e-mail. Additionally, most e-mail servers do not accept executable files (programs with extensions .exe or .com or scripts with extensions .bat, .vbs, .cmd) as e-mail attachments, so it is necessary to compress these first.

Creating a compressed (zipped) folder

To compress files or folders, select them first. Then right-click on a selected item, open Send To and click Compressed (zipped) Folder.

Although the feature is called Compressed Folder, a file with .zip extension will be created. The name of the compressed file will be the first selected item name plus .zip extension - for example, if you select a file named My Pet.jpg, the compressed file name will be My Pet.zip; if you select folders named My Pictures and My Downloads, the compressed file name will be My Pictures.zip.

Windows Vista and 7 offer file renaming right after creating the compressed folder is complete. You can type in a new name and press ENTER key to confirm; or you can accept the default name by clicking elsewhere. Do not change or delete the file extension (.zip)!

Please note that in Windows XP, Compressed Folder does not compress empty folders. In that case, a warning will be displayed. Click OK, deselect the empty folder by holding down CTRL key on keyboard and clicking on the empty folder. Then try compressing again.

Extracting all files and folders from a Compressed Folder

To extract whole Compressed Folders contents, right-click on the compressed folder and click Extract All....

In Windows Vista and 7, the Extract Compressed (Zipped) Folders Wizard appears. Defaults are normally fine, so in most cases just click Extract.
To change destination folder, click Browse....
If you do not want to see a folder with uncompressed files, you can clear the Show extracted files when complete check box.

In Windows XP, the Extraction Wizard appears. Click Next.

Usually the default destination folder is fine, but you can also browse for a different folder if you want to by clicking the Browse... button.
Click Next.

After extraction is complete, you can click Finish. If you do not want to see the extracted files in a new window, clear the Show extracted files check box first.

After you've extracted all files and folders from a compressed folder, it is safe to delete the compressed folder - the file with .zip extension.

Extracting only some files or folders from a Compressed Folder

If you don't want to extract all files, double-click on the compressed folder to open it. Then select the items you want to extract, open Edit menu (press Alt key first in Windows Vista and 7 to reveal the Menu Bar) and click the Copy To Folder... command.
In Windows XP, you can also click Copy the selected items in Common Tasks pane.
 

Select the folder you want to extract the files to and click Copy.
As usual, you can also create a new destination folder using the Make New Folder button.

That's it! Close the Compressed Folder and you're done. 

After you've extracted all required files and folders from a compressed folder, it is safe to delete the compressed folder - the file with .zip extension.

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