File Management Windows XP Word What is File Management?

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1 File Management Windows XP Word 2007 What is File Management? As you use your computer and create files you may need some help in storing and retrieving those files. File management shows you how to create, move, organize, search for, and delete files on your computer. Creating a File For this class we are going to create a file in Microsoft Word. Open Word on the desktop. Type your name on the screen. 1

2 Saving a File to My Documents After you type your name, click on the Office Button, and Save As. Because it is the first time you have saved this document the Save As box will open. You should see your name here. If your name is here, Click Save. Your name should be in the File name box. Just type you don t need to click in the box. As long as the words are blue you can type right over them. Click Save. Then close the file. Your file will now be saved in the My Documents folder (which is a folder on the hard drive of your computer). 2

3 Saving a File to the Desktop Open the My Documents folder on the Desktop. In the My Documents folder you should see the document you just created look for your name. Double click the icon for your document to open the file. Click on the Office Button, and then on Save As. 3

4 The Save as window will open again. Click on Desktop on the left. This changes where the computer will save the file. Then click Save. 4

5 Close the file by clicking in the X in the upper right corner. You should now see an icon for your file on the desktop of the computer. Different Views Open the My Documents folder on the Desktop. You will see the contents of the My Documents folder displayed. 5

6 To change your current view, click View, List Notice how the information stays the same the contents of the folder do not change. The way you see the content changes, but the files, themselves, are the same. To see another view, click View, Details. 6

7 Maximize the window to see all the available information. Notice that you can now see the file name, size, type and date modified. To sort the files by date, click on the words Date Modified at the top of the column. The files are now sorted in chronological order. Folders are sorted first, then individual files. Click on the other column headings to sort those columns too. 7

8 Creating Folders In the My Documents folder, click on the Make a new folder link. If you don t see this link it is because you have a file selected. Click in the white space to deselect the file. Then click the link. The computer will make a new folder for you. Type the name Recipes for the folder and click in the white space in the window. 8

9 Moving Documents into Folders Now that you have a new folder you can begin organizing your documents by placing them in the folder. Using the mouse, click on the document pumpkin cranberry bread. Hold the mouse button down and drag the icon on top of the new Recipes folder icon. Let go of the mouse button and the computer will move that document into the folder. Open the folder to make sure. Double click the folder icon to see if your document is in that folder. If you would like two copies of your file, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking and dragging the file. You will still have one copy in the original location and a second copy in your new location. 9

10 Oops! I made a mistake. What do I do? The quick and easy way to undo a mistake is to press the Ctrl and Z keys at the same time. This will place your file back in its original location. Ctrl + Z is the shortcut for the undo function. If you can t remember which keys to press, the undo function can be found in the Edit menu at the top of any folder you are viewing the contents of. What if you want to put a file into a folder you can t see when looking at the file? If you can t see the folder to click and drag your file into, you can always cut and paste. Left click on the file you wish to move so that it turns blue. Click on the Edit menu. Select Cut. (Select Copy if you wish to have two copies of the file instead of moving it.) Navigate to the folder you wish to place your file in. Once you have opened that folder, click on the Edit menu again. This time select Paste. 10

11 Storage Storage devices allow you to save your files and take the information from computer to computer. Floppy disk Cheap and portable, a floppy disk is a convenient way to save smaller files. Holds 1.44 MB. (About 700 pages of double-spaced text.) CD Rom A compact disk will hold several large files. Holds 700 MB. Thumb drive A CD-R (Read) is for one-time use. You can only burn something to it once, even if that data takes up 1% of the total disk space. You can read the information as often as you want. (Examples are things like music CDs or computer programs purchased from the store.) A CD-RW (Re-Write) is more expensive, but is versatile in that you can add and remove data as often as you want. A thumb drive, jump drive, flash drive, or USB drive will hold a large amount of data and is easily portable. It can hold between 128 MB and 4 GB. (1 GB = 1,024 MB.) Measuring Storage What s the difference between Megabytes and Gigabytes? 1,024 Kilobytes (KB) = 1 Megabyte (MB) 1,024 Megabytes (MB) = 1Gigabyte (GB) 1,024 Gigabytes (GB) = 1 Terabyte (TB) 11

12 Determining Used/Free Space How much free space does your hard drive have? What about that floppy disk? Here s how you can determine that: Double click on the My Computer icon on the desktop (OR click on the Start menu and click on My Computer from there). When the window opens, right click on either Local Disk (C:) or 3 ½ Floppy (A:). Then left click on Properties. The window that opens will display the used (blue) and free (pink) space of that disk. 12

13 Saving to a Floppy Disk To save your document to a floppy disk you must first insert the disk into the computer. Then click on the Office Button and Save As. Use Save to: Save a document for the first time Save any changes made to a document that has been previously saved Use Save As to: Click in the arrow next to My Documents and select 3 ½ floppy (A:), then click Save. Your file will now be saved on the floppy disk. Save a document for the first time Save a previously saved document in a different location Save a copy of an original document with a different name Saving to a Thumb Drive uses the same process. If you had one plugged in, it would be an available option from the Save in: drop-down menu. (It would look something like this: Removable Disk (F:).) Saving to a CD involved a completely different process. See page 13 for more details. (We ll get to it in just a minute.) 13

14 Making Sure the File Fits on a Disk Your Word document fit on the floppy disk with no problem. But what about that picture you took last week? Or the PowerPoint presentation you want to take with you for a lecture? How do you know if those documents will fit? Go back to your Pumpkin Cranberry Bread Recipe. Do you remember where you put it? (Hint: My Documents > Recipes) The size of the file is displayed if you are looking at your folder contents in Tiles or Detail view. If you can t see how large your file is, you can always right click on the document and select Properties. In the Properties window that opens up, you can see how large your file is. 72 KB will easily fit on your Floppy Disk. Your disk can hold 1.44 MB. For practice, try to find out how big the Weather Pictures.ppt file is and the Snow 029.jpg picture is. (They are in the My Documents folder.) Do they fit on a Floppy Disk? What about on a CD or a Flash Drive? 14

15 Saving to a CD The process of transferring data to a Compact Disc (CD) or a Digital Video Disc (DVD) is called burning because a laser engraves little grooves into the shiny surface of the disk. There are many programs used to copy information to a CD. Roxio Easy CD Creator is a common one that comes with a lot of computers. Windows XP and Windows Vista also have the capability built into them with no extra software needed. To use the built-in Windows CD or DVD writer: Right click on the item or items and left click on Properties to determine how much space it will take up on the disc. If it s under 700 MB it will fit on the CD. A DVD it can hold 4.7 GB. Right click on the item once again. Go to the Send To option and then on CD Drive (D:). (Sometimes it will say Direct CD Drive.) A balloon will appear in the lower right corner of your screen stating, You have files waiting to be written to the CD. If you wish to put more data onto the disc you can repeat the previous step as many times as needed. When you are finished, left click on the balloon. A window will open up, showing all of the things you want to place on that disc. Left click on the task located on the left that says, Write these files to CD. The CD Writing Wizard will begin and walk you through the steps. Give your CD a name in the first window, click the Next > button, then sit back and wait for the data to write to the CD. It will tell you when it s done, and the CD will pop out. 15

16 Moving a File to the Recycle Bin If you no longer need a file you can move it to the Recycle Bin to get rid of it. From the My Documents folder, click on the document you want to delete. Then click Delete this file. The computer will check to be sure this is what you want to do. If it is, click Yes. 16

17 Exploring the Recycle Bin If you need to see what files you have put into the Recycle Bin, simply double click on the Recycle Bin to see its contents. This box shows the contents of the Recycle Bin. There is file you just deleted. Restoring Files from the Recycle Bin If you spot a file in the Recycle Bin that you do not want to permanently delete, click the file and select Restore this item. The computer will put the item back in its prior location. 17

18 Emptying the Recycle Bin If you are sure you no longer need any of the files in the Recycle Bin, click on the file and select Empty the Recycle Bin. Your files will be permanently deleted, so be sure you are ready to get rid of those files! Renaming Files To change a file s name (but not its contents) right click on the file and select Rename. The file name will change so that you can edit it. Just type the new file name and hit the Enter key on your keyboard. The name will change to whatever you typed. 18

19 Searching for Files To search the computer for a file, Click Start and Search. Pick the kind of file you are looking for, or click All files and folders. 19

20 You search by the file name, if you know it, or by a phrase that is in the file itself. When you are ready for the computer to find the file click Search. The computer will find all the files that contain all or part of the file name. In this case, it found 113 files that included the letters sam in the file name. The first one is the document Sam Smith. To open that document, double click it in the list. 20