Basics of Files and Folders in Windows Vista

This article shows you how to manage files and folders. It starts off by discussing what files and folders are before explaining what you can do with them and how to use Windows Explorer, Windows’ primary file-management tool. Windows Explorer is vital to using Windows effectively. You can use Windows Explorer to search for files and folders, to manipulate them, to view them in different ways, and to delete them, either temporarily or permanently. You can also use Windows Explorer to compress and uncompress files and folders, either to save space or to make archive files that are easy to handle. At the end of the article, you’ll find a section on how to configure AutoPlay’s behavior and how to customize folders in Windows Explorer.

Understanding the Basics of Files and Folders

If you’ve used computers at all, you’ll know that a file is a named object containing information that’s stored on a disk. The disk can be a local hard drive; a networked drive including a web server; a CD, DVD, or other removable drive; a tape drive; or even a humble floppy drive. Each file has a name so that you and the computer can distinguish it. In Windows, each filename can be up to 255 characters long. Filenames can include letters, numbers, and some punctuation, such as commas ,, periods ., semicolons ;, single quotation marks ‘‘, or apostrophes ‘. Filenames cannot contain forward slashes /, backslashes \, colons :

, asterisks *, question marks ?, double quotation marks “, less-than <> signs, or pipe characters |, because Windows either uses those characters literally or assigns special meanings to them. For example, a colon is used to denote a drive for instance, C:

refers to the C:


drive, and an asterisk is a wildcard character that represents one or more characters in searches and commands. The 255 characters include the path to the file. The path also sometimes called the directory path gives the sequence of drive and folders that describes the location of the file and folders. For example, if a file is in the Documents folder in the \Will\ folder of the \Users\ folder on the C:

drive, the path to that file is C:

\Users\Will\Documents. That path is 23 characters long, including the backslashes and the spaces, so any file stored in that folder can have a filename of up to 232 characters 255 minus the 23 characters in the path. A folder is a file that can contain other files or folders. By using folders, you can organize your files into categories. Folder names can be up to 255 characters long, but you’ll need to keep them shorter than this if you want to use long filenames within the folders. The possible length of a folder name also includes the path to the folder and the length of any filenames that the folder already contains. If you rename a folder so that the path and filename of a file it contains add up to more than 255 characters, you can no longer access the file. When working in a graphical environment such as Windows, you don’t normally need to type paths to files the way you often had to in DOS and similar text-based operating systems. Instead, you use graphical representations of folders and files to navigate to the folders and files you need, and then manipulate them in graphical windows. Some of this you do with Windows Explorer discussed in the next section, and some via dialog boxes in the individual programs.

Using Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer is Windows’ built-in utility for managing files and folders - all kinds of files and folders, including the files and folders that make up the Start menu, those that make up Control Panel, and so forth. Windows Explorer is a separate program from Internet Explorer, the web browser that you use for browsing the Internet. This article uses Windows Explorer to refer to Windows Explorer including those for Computer, Network Connections, Control Panel, and so on, Internet Explorer to refer to any Explorer window that calls itself Internet Explorer, and descriptive terms such as the Desktop, the Taskbar, and the notification area to refer to the named components of the shell.

Troubleshooting:
Close and Restart Windows Explorer if Your Desktop Stops Responding

As well as letting you manage files and folders, Windows Explorer is also the shell for Windows - a logical layer that provides a graphical interface that lets you interact with Windows without talking code. Windows Explorer runs the Desktop, the Taskbar, the notification area, and the other components of the Windows interface.

Normally, this fact is just a curiosity, but if the Desktop stops responding, you may be able to bring it back under control by closing and restarting Windows Explorer. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Right-click open space on the Taskbar and choose Task Manager from the context menu. Windows displays Task Manager.

2. Click the Processes tab. Windows displays the Processes page.

3. Select the process named EXPLORER.EXE.

4. Click the End Process button. Task Manager displays a Task Manager Warning dialog box warning that terminating the process could lose your data or cause your system to be unstable.

5. Click the Yes button. Task Manager terminates Windows Explorer. The Taskbar and notification area disappear, together with the Start button and all your Desktop icons. Task Manager keeps running.

6. Still in Task Manager, choose File New Task Run. Windows displays the Create New Task dialog box.

7. Type Explorer in the Open text box.

8. Click the OK button. Windows closes the Create New Task dialog box and runs Windows Explorer. Back come your icons, the Start button, the Taskbar, and the notification area, together with all their functionality.

Starting Windows Explorer

The easiest way to start Windows Explorer is to click the Start button so that Windows displays the Start menu, and then choose one of the shortcuts associated with Windows Explorer:

Documents, Pictures, Music, Computer, or Network if this shortcut appears on the Start menu. Each of these opens a Windows Explorer window to the specified folder. You can also run Windows Explorer by choosing Start All Programs Accessories Windows Explorer. Doing so opens a Documents window in Explore mode.

Exploring My Computer

If you choose Start Computer, Windows displays an Windows Explorer window showing the contents of the Computer folder, as in the example.

Forward button and Back button When you’ve navigated from one folder to another in the Windows Explorer window, you can click the Back button to go back to each previous folder in turn. After using the Back button, you can click the Forward button to go forward again. When you first open an Windows Explorer window, there’s no folder path for you to move along. Recent Pages drop-down list Click the Recent Pages drop-down list to display a list of the folders you’ve used recently. To jump to a folder, select it in the list. Address bar The Address bar indicates which folder the Windows Explorer window is displaying. You can click one of the triangle buttons to display a list of contents in the folder named before the button. For example, you can click the triangle button to the right of Computer to display a list of the folders and objects contained in the Computer folder. Toolbar The Toolbar contains buttons for taking widely used actions in Windows Explorer. The Organize button and the Views button display drop-down menus of commands. Search box To search for a file or folder, click in the Search box, and then type the search term or terms. Windows searches as you type. Favorite Links area The Favorite Links area in the left panel contains links to frequently used folders, such as Documents, Pictures, and Music. The set of links changes depending on which folder is displayed in the Windows Explorer window. When the Folders pane is displayed, you may need to click the More item at the bottom of the Favorite Links list to access the links at the bottom of the list.

Folders bar Click the Folders bar to toggle the display of the Folders pane on and off. The Folders pane lets you navigate through drives and folders by using a hierarchical arrangement of icons:

Each drive appears as an expandable item, with the folders it contains appearing below it when you expand it; similarly, you can expand those folders to reveal their subfolders beneath them.

Document window The document window displays the contents of the folder shown in the Address bar. Windows Explorer provides several different views for the document window, as you’ll see later in this article. The folder’s contents can be sorted into groups:

Hard Disk Drives, Devices with Removable Storage floppy disk drives, optical drives, and removable disks such as USB drives, Network Location network folders to which this computer is connected, and Other which contains items such as My Sharing Folders, folders shared using the Windows Live Messenger instant-messaging software.

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