Alan's HINTS & TIPS - Finding your way around folders

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Finding your way around folders.

FOLDERS, or DIRECTORIES as they used to be called, are pretty confusing for newcomers to computers. We need to have folders to maintain some sort of order on the computer.

If we look at the storage area of your computer as a house and look at the folders as rooms it might start to make a bit more sense. After all, folders weren't just put there to make things difficult for computer users. The main rooms in a house are used for general purpose where other rooms have specific uses - Lisa's room, Tom's room, parent's room, and then there's the laundry and the loo, not to mention the garage and workshop - all for specific purposes. Likewise, the computer needs to have special areas for various things so everything isn't all mixed in together and VERY difficult to find.

What we really need to do is put all similar things into one area, like a folder. We already have one called "My Documents" which is the default folder for documents and there is another one dedicated to the various parts of the "Windows" operating system (don't mess with this one). So, it stands to reason that we should create other folders for specific purposes and a lot of this is done automatically when new software (or program) is added to your computer.

The main storage area on your computer is the "hard drive" and this is designated as the "C:" drive in computer terms. Your floppy disk drive is called the "A:" drive and other drives are allocated letters also. For instance, your CD-ROM drive is allocated a letter which is generally the next one up from the hard drive - usually "D:" in a system with a single hard drive. I don't intend going further into drive letters at this stage - the main idea is to get the feel of the folders which will be in each of these drives.

Within the C: drive there are normally a quantity of folders (originally called directories). Some of these folders have other folders inside them also.
The layout above possibly gives a better idea of the system, but the usual graphic display in Windows Explorer is shown below.

Using Windows Explorer

You have to go to [START], Programs, then Windows Explorer, or later Windows versions usethe Windows key plus "E".
So, looking at the picture at the left you will see a window with two sections - left and right.

If you click on a folder in the left side, then the contents of that folder will appear on the right side.
If a folder on the left has a [+] sign next to it, that means there are other folders inside it. This is called 'nested folders'. For instance, you could have a folder called Photographs, and inside that folder you could have folders for "Tom", "Fred", "Mary", "Sarah", "Mum & Dad" and so on.

Using folders keeps similar things together and makes them easier to find. Remember, if you click on a folder in the lefthand side, it's contents will appear on the righthand side.

You will also notice the other drive letters marked A: and D: if you use the scroll bar to the right of the lefthand panel - this includes any other storage devices your computer might have installed. Generally you can copy or move items from any of these to another drive. Of course you can't copy to a CD drive unless it is a CD Writer.

For further information on copying, cutting and pasting from folders see
Using 'Windows Explorer' to copy files from or to a floppy disk.