MICROSOFT WINDOWS 7 OVERVIEW

Transcription

1 MICROSOFT WINDOWS 7 OVERVIEW The taskbar is the thin strip that runs across the bottom of your screen. It is split into a number of different areas: a round Start button, Quick Launch icons, a notification area, and a clock. All other areas are the Taskbar itself. The image below shows where the different areas are: The Start button is explained in a section all of its own, as it's probably the most important area of the Taskbar. There is one more area on the Taskbar, and it's easily overlooked - the Show Desktop button. In the images above, you can just see a narrow rectangle to the right of the clock: Click this button to minimize all open programmes and reveal the desktop. Quick Launch Icons In the main image above, take a look at the three big icons to the right of the round Start button. These are quick launch icons, meaning you can quickly launch any of the programmes you see there. When you hold your mouse over one of the icons, you'll see a small popup rectangle that shows you a preview of any open windows. In the image below, we're holding our mouse over the Firefox icon. (Firefox is a web browser used to display internet pages. It's Internet Explorer's main competitor.) In Windows Vista, however, the icons will be smaller, and there's no popup. Page 1 of 70

2 Click on the preview window and it opens the programme up in full screen. There are several ways to add new programmes to the Quick Launch area, but Windows 7 makes it a lot easier. Open up a programme using the Start menu. When it's open, use the right mouse button to click its icon in the Taskbar. A new menu appears: In the image above, we have Microsoft Excel open. Right-clicking its icon in the Taskbar gave us the above menu. Once "Pin this program to the taskbar" is clicked with the left mouse button, it will appear permanently in the Quick Launch arrear. If you want to get rid of any Quick Launch programmes, the item on the menu will say "Unpin this program from the taskbar" when you right-click. You can also use the Start menu to add programmes to the Quick Launch area. Again, right-click the programme you want to add. From the menu, select "Pin to Taskbar". Page 2 of 70

3 In the image below, we're adding Notepad as a Quick Launch icon: The result is a new icon in the Quick Launch area: Notification Area The Notification area, formally called the System Tray, is the area of the Taskbar where you can view programmes and tasks that are running in the background, as well as view important messages about updating your computer. (Although the clock is considered part of the Notification area, we'll look at this separately.) In the image below, the Notification area shows three icons: Page 3 of 70

4 The first one, the white arrow, is for hidden icons. Click the white arrow to see which icons have been hidden: Probably the only one of the four icons above that you'll have is the speaker icon. This sets the volume for your speakers. If yours is too low, click the speaker icon to see a slider that you can move up and down: Page 4 of 70

5 The second of the three icons in the Notification area is a white flag. This flag alerts you to issues that need to be taken care of. Click the flag icon to see if there are any problems: As you can see, Windows 7 is telling us that there is 1 message, and that it's to do with Windows Defender. You can click on the "1 message" heading at the top, or on the message itself. You can also open the "Action Center" from here. The third icon that appears in the Notification area (on our computer, anyway) is a Network icon. This tells us that we have an internet connection, and there are no problems. If the internet access is down, there will be a red X through this icon: The red X will disappear when the problem with the internet is solved. In the next part, we'll take a look at the Windows 7 clock, and the date and time. The Date and Time in Windows 7 The default clock shows you the date as well as the time: You can change how Windows 7 displays these. You can even add clocks for other time zones. Page 5 of 70

6 Click on the clock to see a new popup window: As you can see, as well as a clock you get a calendar. Click the arrows to display new months: To change the settings for the clock, the date, and the time, click on "Change date and time settings". You should see the following dialogue box appear: Page 6 of 70

7 If your clock is showing the wrong time, or the wrong date, click the button "Change date and time..." When you do, you'll see the following dialogue box appear: Page 7 of 70

8 To change the date, click the black left and right arrows to move to the correct month. Then select the date you want. To change the time, click the up and down arrows below the clock. Click OK when the date and time are correct. If you want to play around with the way Windows 7 displays the Date and Time, click on "Change calendar settings" then play around with the settings. You may need to restart before the changes take effect. If you want more than one time zone to appear, click the" Additional Clocks" tab at the top of the Date and Time dialogue box: Page 8 of 70

9 Click the box to the left of "Show this clock" and the drop down list will become available. Select a time zone from the list. Type a name for you clock in the box below the heading "Enter display name". Then click OK. Click OK again to get rid of the Date and Time dialogue box. Now click the clock area again in the bottom right of the taskbar. You should see your new clock appear: In the next lesson, we'll have a look at adding toolbars to the Windows 7 taskbar. Page 9 of 70

10 Toolbars in Windows 7 You can add Toolbars to your taskbar area. A toolbar is a list of shortcuts to favourite areas of your computers. Right click the Taskbar to see the following menu: Select Toolbars to see the built-in Windows 7 ones: As you can see, there are entries for Address, Links, PowerDVD 8, Desktop, and New toolbar. (Unless you have the PowerDVD programme on your computer, you won't see this one.) To see what they do, click the first one, Address. You should see the following appear in your Taskbar: This is similar to the Search bar on the Start menu. You can type a web site address in the text box (but see the warning below, before you do). When you click the blue double arrows it will launch your browser and navigate to the website you typed. Or just navigate to areas on your computer. Click the black down arrow to see some shortcuts: Page 10 of 70

11 Click on a shortcut to launch that particular programme or dialogue box. The entry for "notepad.exe" in the image above is there because we typed it in the Address bar. When we pressed the enter key on the keyboard, this programme was then launched. If you know the name of a programme on your computer, type it in the address bar to open it up. WARNING: Deleting Items From the Address Bar When you type a web address in the Address Bar above, it will add it there on a permanent basis. If you were to close down the computer and opening it again, the address will still be there. This could be quite problematic, if the web address is a sensitive one. Sadly, Microsoft haven't provided an easy way to delete single URLs from the Address bar above. Doing so means opening and editing the Windows registry, which is beyond the scope of this artcile. However, you can clear all the entries in the Address bar quite easily. Click the Start button. From the Start menu, select Computer from the list on the right hand side. You should see an Explorer window open. The Address bar is at the top, and will say Computer: DON'T left click inside this Address bar, but right click. (It's easier if you simply right click the word "Computer".) You're looking for a short menu to appear. It will have four items on it: Copy Address, Copy Address as Text, Edit Address, and Delete History. This one: Page 11 of 70

12 Select Delete History. It should clear the items in your Address bar. Not only the Address bar at the top, but also the one in the Toolbar at the bottom of the screen. The Links Toolbar Item The Links item on the menu refers to the Favourites Bar folder that appears in Internet Explorer. These are shortcuts to websites you've added. The Links toolbar looks like this, when you add it to the Taskbar: Click the double white arrows to see a menu appear: But you can also right-click the word "Links". A new menu appears: Page 12 of 70

13 Select "Open Folder" to see the shortcuts: You can add your own shortcut items to the favourites bar folder. In the image below, we've right-clicked on the Documents folder under Libraries, and selected Copy: Page 13 of 70

14 We've then right-clicked inside of the favourites bar folder and selected Paste Shortcut: Page 14 of 70

15 The Documents folder will then appear as a shortcut on the Links bars: Creating New Toolbars At the bottom of the toolbar menu there is an item for "New toolbar". This allows you to create a toolbar of your very own: Page 15 of 70

16 When you click on "New toolbar", you'll see an Explorer window open. Select a folder to add to your new toolbar. In the image below, we've selected the Pictures folder from the list on the left: The Folder text box at the bottom then says "Pictures". Click the Select Folder button. Your chosen folder will appear on your Taskbar at the bottom of your screen: You now have a handy shortcut to any images that you save in the Pictures folder. In the next lesson, we'll take a look at the Start button. The Windows 7 Start Button Arguably, the most important part of the Taskbar is the Start button. The Start button is where a lot of the action takes place in Windows 7. Page 16 of 70

17 The Start button can be found in the bottom left of your screen, and looks like this: Click the Start button once with your left mouse button and you'll see a menu appear: The Start menu is split into two different areas. The white area on the left is for software programmes that you have installed on your computer. But these are the programmes you have recently used. If an entry has a black arrow it means that documents can be opened by clicking the shortcut. For example, here's what happens when we click our Microsoft Word entry above: Page 17 of 70

18 We have four recently opened documents that we can click on. These will then open in Word. Notice the small pin icon to the right of the Recent list. Clicking the icon will pin that document to the Word shortcut menu. This is useful if you open one particular document all the time. You can see more software by clicking on "All Programs" at the bottom of the Start menu. The area on the left will be replaced by a list of programmes available to you: Page 18 of 70

19 Software can be launched by clicking on an icon with the left mouse button. However, the yellow folders will expand when you click on them, revealing more options available to you. For example, clicking on the yellow Games folder will reveal the following: To start the programme, click once with your left mouse button on your chosen item. To return to the first list of programmes, click < Back at the bottom of the menu. The other area is the darker strip on the right. These are shortcuts for locations on your computer. We'll explore these options in later sections, especially the Control Panel and Computer options. But one more thing to notice in the dark area on the right of the Start menu is the Shut down button. Clicking this will obviously shut down your computer, but click the arrow to the right of the Shutdown button to see the following options: As you can see, there are five options on the menu. The first is useful if you share your computer with others, and have set up multiple accounts. Click Switch user to see other account names. A user can then enter login details without the need to shutdown the computer and start again. The Log Off option logs you out of your account. Again, the computer doesn't shut down. Instead, you'll see a screen where you or others can log back in again. The Lock option prevents others from using the computer until you enter your password again. (You'll learn how to set up multiple users accounts in a later section.) Page 19 of 70

20 The final two options are Restart and Sleep. The Restart is self-explanatory. But the Sleep option is useful if you're not going to be using the computer for a while. It powers down the hardware, saving you energy. Start Menu Picture If you look at the top of your Start menu you'll see a picture, which is a flower in the images above. You can change this. Click the picture with your left mouse button and a new screen will open. This one: Click the link for Change you picture. You'll then see other images you can use: Page 20 of 70

21 Select a picture from the ones available, or click the Browse for more pictures link. When you're happy with your selection, click the Change Picture button at the bottom. Searching from the Start menu At the bottom of the left-hand area of the Start menu is a Search area: If you have forgotten where you stored or downloaded a particular file, simply type its name (or just part of its name) in the search box. You should then see search options appear: Page 21 of 70

22 In the image above, we're searching for anything related to the search term "york". Window 7 has found 15 documents, 3 pictures, and 215 files. In the files section, you can see little envelope icons, meaning Windows has searched all our s as well. If the file you're looking for is not there, then click where it says "See more results". In the next part, you'll learn how to set up a new user account, so that others can share the computer. Page 22 of 70

23 User Accounts in Windows 7 If you have more than one person using the computer it makes sense to create a user account for them. That way, they can have their own backgrounds, themes, internet settings, etc. To create a new account, click your picture on the Start menu: This will open up the following screen: Click on the link that says "Manage another account" and you'll see this screen: Page 23 of 70

24 There are already two accounts set up here. One is a Guest account, and the other is an Administrator account. If an account is set up as Administrator then you have full control of what happens on the computer. The other type of account is called a Standard account. This is the type of account you should set up for other people, as it means they don't have full control on the computer. For example, if they wanted to install software, they would have to type in an Administrator's password to do so. Which means they'd have to ask you. This makes your computer more secure than it otherwise would be. (Only Administrators can set up accounts for others.) So to create a new account, click on the link "Create a new account", which is circled in red above. Page 24 of 70

25 You'll then see a new screen: Type a name for the account in the text box. (We'd just called ours User2.) Keep it on the default option, Standard user. Then click the Create Account button at the bottom. You'll then be taken back to the account page: Page 25 of 70

26 As you can see the new account is created, along with a random picture (a balloon, in this case). The Owner account will still be selected, however. Click on your new account and you'll be able to change some settings for it: "Change the account type" means setting it to either a Standard user or an Administrator. But you can create a password for this account by clicking the link. You'll then be taken to the password screen: Page 26 of 70

27 You can ignore all the dire warnings if this is a new account, as they won't have any encrypted files, certificates or website password. But type a password, and a password hint. Then click the button at the bottom "Create Password". You'll then be taken back to the account options. In the next part we'll take a look at Parental Controls. Parental Controls in Windows 7 In the last lesson, you'll learnt how to set up a new user account. However, If the user account you're creating is for a child, you may want to set some Parental Control. We'll do that now. Make sure you are logged in to your own account, and that you are Administrator. (if you're not sure what this means, go back to the last lesson.) To get to the accounts page, click your picture on the Start menu: Page 27 of 70

28 When the User Accounts screen appears, click the link in the bottom left that says "Parental Controls", circled in red in the image below: This will take you to a screen showing all the user accounts available: Page 28 of 70

29 Click on the account you'd like to change, which is User2 in our case. When you click on account, you'll see the following screen: Page 29 of 70

30 Select the option at the top for "On, enforce current settings". The three options below that will then become available. The first option, Time limits allows you to set when that user can use the computer. Click the link to see the settings below: Here, we've blocked access for the user from half past eight at night till 9 in the morning. Click the OK button (not shown above) to get back to the Parental Control options. The Games options let's you control which types of games can be played by the user. Click the Games link to see this screen: Page 30 of 70

31 If you don't want this user playing any games at all, select the No option. The rest of the options will then be greyed out. For the less draconian parents, click the Set games ratings to see this rather long screen: Page 31 of 70

32 Page 32 of 70

33 The first thing we've done is to block games that haven't set a rating. (These types of games tend to be from non-mainstream developers.) We've also selected the option for Parental Guidance, which has a PG certificate in the UK. Any game that has a higher category will be blocked. We've also selected all six of the options at the bottom. Click OK to confirm your choices. The other option you have as a parent is to block or allow specific games: These are games that are installed on the computer for all users. Click the link and you'll see a list of the games you can block or allow. Click OK on the Games section to go back to the Parental Controls section. If you want to block certain programmes, click the link that says "Allow and block specific programmes": Page 33 of 70

34 You'll then see the following screen: Page 34 of 70

35 The list is quite long and bewildering! In fact, it so confusing you may be better off just leaving this altogether, unless you're an expert user. When you're done with these options, click the OK button to get back to the Parental Control option. Click OK on this screen and you're done - your new account is ready to be used. To see if it works, click the Start button in the bottom left of your screen. From the Start menu, select Shut Down > Switch User: You'll then see the Windows 7 login screen. You new user account should be there, along with your administrator one. Click the new user account to see it in action. If you want to set up another user account, log in as Administrator and start the whole process all over again. In the next lesson, you'll learn about the basics of your Hard Drive. Hard Drive Basics The Hard Drive on your computer is where all your files are stored. Not only that, it's the place where the Operating System itself is installed. A hard drive is a physical thing inside of your computer. If you were to take it apart, you'd see one of more disks (called platters), one on top of the other. In a modern hard drive, however, there's usually just one platter. The disks are magnetised and can be written to and read from. The writing and reading is done by an arm which moves across as the disk is spun round. If you were buying a new hard drive, you'd see a figure like 7,200 rpm (revolutions per minute) or 10, 000 rpm. This refers to the speed at which the disks spin. The higher the spin speed the faster the hard disk will be. Not all hard drives use the spinning disk and arm approach, however. A modern laptop or Notebook may use something called a Solid State Drive (SSD). These have no moving parts, and are considered faster than a hard drive. However, the space available on a SSD is a lot less than on a hard disk, but this could change over the next few years or so. At the moment, SSDs are lot more expensive than hard drives. But again, this could change. Whichever drive you have, hard or Solid State, just bear in mind that a drive is a physical thing that you use to store files, install programmes and Operating Systems. The size of a hard drive does not refer to its height or width but to how many Gigabytes of data can be stored on it. If you're wondering how big a Gigabyte is then think of a single byte as holding, say, one letter of the alphabet. A kilobyte can then hold a thousand letters (actually, Page 35 of 70

36 1024 letters as there's just over a thousand bytes in a kilobyte). A Megabyte could hold 1, 000, 000 letters (1, 048, 576 bytes), and a Gigabyte 1000, 000, 000 letters (1 073, 741, 824)! But those numbers are fairly meaningless in modern-day computing. Think of how big a picture is that you take on a camera phone. A medium sized image will be about 250 kilobytes. So you could get four if the memory held only a megabyte and about if you had a Gigabyte of memory on your phone. You can check to see how big the hard drive is on your own computer. To do that, start up Windows Explorer by clicking its icon just to the right of the Start button: When Windows Explorer starts, you'll see this screen: Page 36 of 70

37 The default location is inside of the Libraries folder. Click the Computer section instead: You'll then see this: This area should display a graphic of how much space you have left on your hard drive, and how big it is. In the image above, this computer has a hard drive size of 465 Gigabytes (GB), and there is still a roomy 410 Gigabytes of space free to use. The image also shows other drives attached to the computer, a DVD writer in this case. If you have a USB memory stick, it should show up here when it is inserted. Page 37 of 70

38 Note also that the drive has the name Local Drive (C:), or just the C Drive for short. This C Drive is also known as the root drive, as everything is stored on it. Think of it as the master folder that holds all other folders and files inside of it. Now click on the C drive to highlight it. You should see some extra option become available at the top: The one we're interested in is the Properties option. Click on this and you'll see a dialogue box appear. This one: Page 38 of 70

39 Again, we see a graphic of how big the hard drive is, and how much space is free. The graphic this time is a pie chart. One thing to note here is that the size of the hard drive is 465 Gigabytes, even though it was marketed as having a 500 gigabyte hard drive. So why the discrepancy? It's because the manufactures uses a small "g" for gigabytes, and they use 1 gigabyte to mean a billion bytes. However, a true Gigabytes has a capital "G" and means 1 073, 741, 824 bytes. So a 500 Gigabyte hard drive actually has 35 GB missing! Hard Disk Cleanup If your hard drive is showing a lot of used space, and not much free space, then click the button "Disk Cleanup" to see if you can rescue some space. You should then see a small dialogue box like this one: Page 39 of 70

40 When Windows has finished its calculation, you'll then see this: Disk Cleanup is telling us that it has found 90.0 Megabytes of files that it can safely delete. These are the ones with check marks. You can check any of the other boxes, as well. For example, the image above shows that the Recycle Bin has 1.97 GB of files in it. If you're sure you haven't accidentally sent an important file to the Recycle Bin then you can safely delete these files as well. In which case, give it a check mark by clicking inside of its box. The same applies to all the others on the list (scroll down to see more). Click on an item to see a description of just what each item on the list does. Page 40 of 70

41 You can also click the button at the bottom "Clean up system files". All this does is to add even more areas to the list. But you need to delete the system files with care. If you're not sure about an area, leave it unchecked. When you're happy with your selections, click the OK button to free up disk space. Windows will then go to work erasing the files and documents you have selected. When it's done, it will return to the Disk Cleanup screen: In the image above, we're freed up 2 Gigabytes of space. Another area worth exploring in the image above is Tools. Click this tab at the top to see the following screen: Page 41 of 70

42 You only need to click the Error-checking option if you've been having a few problems with your computer. Otherwise, you can leave it alone. The Defragmentation option is really a matter of choice. If you have a big hard drive with lots of space, there's little point in defragmenting. It's supposed to speed up file access times, but is really only relevant on older hard drives that don't have much free space. The Backup option is worth exploring. When you click the button, Windows will search your computer for other drives, like DVD writers. If it finds one, it will ask you to use that to backup your files. More expensive versions of Windows 7 will have better options for back up, like a network drive. You should always back up your important files and documents, but cheaper versions of Windows 7 are not that much help - you could easily copy your files to a DVD yourself, without Window's help! Click OK on the dialogue boxes to get rid of them. You'll meet Windows Explorer again in the next section, when we explore the important subject of file extensions. File Extensions In the next section, we discuss how to work with images. Before we get to that, it's a good idea to check to make sure you have files extensions switched on. Page 42 of 70

43 A file extension is the dot and letters at the end of a file name. For example, a picture you take on your camera phone will probably end in.jpg or.jpeg. The letters stand for Joint Photographic Experts Group, and tell Windows and other programmes that it is an image file. Other file extensions for images are GIF, PNG, and TIFF. If you have file extensions switched off you won't be able to tell what sort of image you have. Not only that, somebody could send you an attachment to an that looks like this: picture_file.jpg If you just saw the JPG ending, you might open the file, thinking it was an image. However, the real file ending could be this: picture_file.jpg.exe But you won't see the.exe at the end if you have file extensions switched off. The exe means it's an executable programme that will be installed onto your computer. If you opened the file, the programme would install automatically. And it certainly won't have your best interests at heart! In the image below, we have four files showing, but no file extensions, so we could be vunerable to this sort of attack: To switch on file extensions, start Windows Explorer by clicking its icon just to the right of the start button: Page 43 of 70

44 The default for Windows Explorer is to hide the menu bars. To view them, press the left ALT key on your keyboard (the one to the left of the space bar). You should see this at the top of Windows Explorer: If you still can't see the menu bars click Organize > Layout > Menu Bar: Now that you have a menu bar, click the Tools item. From the Tools menu, select Folder Options: Page 44 of 70

45 You should see the following dialogue box appear: Click on the View tab at the top to see the following: Page 45 of 70

46 Have a look at the list of options and locate "Hide extensions for known file types": Page 46 of 70

47 As, you can see there is a check mark in the box next to this entry. If yours is the same, click the box to remove the check mark. Then click the Apply button at the bottom. Click OK to get rid of the dialogue box. You should now be able to see the extensions on the end of file names: Page 47 of 70

48 Our four images are now showing the JPG file extension. Now that you can see file extensions, we'll make a start on working with images in Windows 7. Copy and Paste Pictures to a New Folder In this tutorial, you will learn how to copy and paste pictures to a new folder. Once you've done that, you will learn how to add information to each image, so that they can be located and referenced more easily. Let's start by creating a new folder. Start the Windows 7 Explorer by clicking its icon to the right of the Start button: When Windows Explorer starts, click on Pictures in the Libraries section of the Navigation pane (If you can't see the Navigation pane, click the Organize button at the top. Then select Layout > Navigation pane): Page 48 of 70

49 On the right, you'll see folders that are in this library. Windows 7 has some Sample Pictures in this library. But you can add your own, and create folders for them. Create a folder by clicking the New Folder button at the top: Page 49 of 70

50 The new folder appears, with blue highlighted text: Page 50 of 70

51 The blue highlight means that you can go ahead and type a new name for that folder. In the image below, we've changed the name to York: Page 51 of 70

52 If you've clicked away from the new folder, click back on to it once with your left mouse button. Pause for a second or two and then click again with your left mouse button. It should turn blue again. If it doesn't, right click the new folder and select "Rename" from the menu that appears. Now that you have a new folder, you need to add some images to it. Use the Navigation pane on the left to navigate to a location on your computer where you have some image. In the image below, we've found some images on our Network drive. (If you have a images on a USB stick or data card, insert it and then click Computer. Your USB stick or data card should show up there as a drive.) If you're not sure where you have any images, look inside of your Downloads folder, or your Documents folder: Page 52 of 70

53 Once you've found some images, select the ones you want to add to your new folder. To select one image, simply click it with your left mouse button. To select more than one image, hold down the left CTRL key on your keyboard. With the CTRL key held down, click each file you want to add. If you've made a mistake, click the file again to deselect it. Once you have selected your images, right click on any of them. From the menu that appears select Copy: Page 53 of 70

54 Now navigate back to the new folder you've just created in the Pictures library. Double click the new folder to move inside of it. You should see a message on the right saying "this folder is empty". Right click anywhere inside of the big white area, and right-click again. From the menu, select Paste: Page 54 of 70

55 The images will be copied and pasted over to the new folder: If your pictures are not showing as thumbnails like ours, click the icon and arrow circled in red below: Page 55 of 70

56 From the menu, select Tiles. (But click each one in turn to see what they do): Now that you have some images in the folder, you can add some information to them. We'll do that in the next section. Adding Information to an Image Windows 7 lets you add lots of information to an image. In this section, you'll learn how to do this. (If you haven't yet created a new folder and moved some images to it, then we did this in the last section.) To add information to an image, you need to be able to see the Details panel at the bottom: Page 56 of 70

57 (If you can't see this, click the Organise button at the top. From the menu, select Layout > Details pane.) With the details pane showing, select an image in your folder. You should then see the details for that picture, as in the image above. The information about the selected image is shown on the pane. However, this information can be retried by others, if you give them a copy of the picture. If you want to remove image information, right click on the Details pane to see the following menu: The Size is how many items can fit onto the Details pane. The values are Small, Medium, and Large. Click each one in turn and see what they do. But click the Remove properties option to see the following dialogue box: Page 57 of 70

58 Scroll down to see what properties are recorded about the image. There's an awful lot! If you don't what to share this information with others, tick a box. Once you're happy with your choices, click OK. If you don't want to change anything, just click Cancel. Rating your Images Give the picture a Rating out of 5 by moving your mouse pointer over the stars. Click the score you think your picture deserves. We've given our first image a Rating of 1 out of 5: Once you click on the stars, you should see Save and Cancel buttons appear. Click Save if you're happy with the rating. (You can change it.) Page 58 of 70

59 Add a Title to your Images To give your picture a Title, move your mouse just to the right of the word "Title". You should see a black rectangle appear: Click once with you left mouse button to see a text box appear, along with the Save and Cancel buttons again: Click inside the text box and type a title. Then click the Save button You can add comments and the Author's (photographer) name in the same way: Adding Tags to Images The Tag section is used for searching. You can add as many Tags as you like. Click inside the Tag area and type a word or two that describes the image: Notice the semi-colon at the end of our "York minster" tag. The semi-colon is used to separate each tag. When you add a second tag, Windows will insert a new semi-colon at the end: Page 59 of 70

60 Click the Save button when you've finished typing your tags. Add information to the other images in the folder. In the next lesson, you'll see how to use the information you have just added. Sorting Images in Windows 7 In the previous section, you learned how to add information to an image. In this section, you'll se what you can do with all this information. This comes under the topic of Sorting. First, though, change your View slider from Tiles to Details: Page 60 of 70

61 When you arrange the window to Details view, your screen should look like this one: We now have a list of images with the Name, Date, Tags, Size and Ratings showing. These headings can all be used to sort your images. Click on the Ratings, for example, and you'll see a dropdown box: You can choose to display only images with 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 stars. All you need to do is to check each box. The ones not checked will then be hidden: Here, we're choosing to display only 1 and 2 star images, perhaps with a view to deleting them. (To delete an image, right-click. From the menu that appears, select Delete. Or choose Rename to change the name of the image.) To view all your images again, uncheck the boxes. Page 61 of 70

62 Try clicking some of the other headings. Try a sort by Tags to see what happens. If you want more choices right-click anywhere on the headings to see the following menu: The ones we have displayed have a check mark next to them. Click an item on the list to either select or deselect it. In the image below, we have deselected the Size and Date and added the Dimensions instead: And here's the result: Page 62 of 70

63 To see other sort options, select the More option from the menu. You should then see this dialogue box: Scroll down to see a huge list of options you can choose from. Page 63 of 70

64 Arrange By options Another way to sort you images is via the "Arrange by" dropdown list. Click the arrow to see the following: In the image below, we've chosen to arrange our images by Month: Play around with the various options on the menu and see what they do. Change it back to folders, if you want the Windows 7 default view. Searching for Images One good reason to add Tags to all your images is that it helps in a Windows search. In the example below, we've typed "York minster" into the search box on the Start menu: Page 64 of 70

65 Notice that Windows has found all the images from our folder, even though none of the pictures was called "York minster": it found them because of the tags. And that's it for images in Windows 7. We'll move on. In the next part, you'll learn how to take a screenshot and then manipulate it in Windows 7 Paint. How to Take Screenshots In this lesson you'll learn how to take a screenshot, and how to crop that image down to size. For example, suppose you were getting an error message on screen and wanted to send it to us to see if we could help. Instead of typing the error message, or trying to explain it, you could take a screenshot, crop to reduce the file size, and then insert the image into your . Here's how. First, you need to locate the Prt Scrn button on your keyboard. This stands for Print Screen, and is usually located on the right hand side of a standard keyboard, just above the Insert, Home and Page Up keys. However, if you have a laptop, the Prt Scrn button can be hard to locate. Look in the very top right of your keypad. Not only that, you may have to hold down your laptop's function key first, which is usually found in the bottom left of the keypad. Press the Print Screen button once on a PC, or use the Function Key > Print Screen combination on a laptop. This will copy whatever you see on your screen to the computer's memory. Once the screen is in the computer's memory it can be pasted into an image editor for manipulation. Page 65 of 70

66 The image editor we'll use is Paint. This has been much improved with Windows 7 and can be found by clicking your Start button. From the Start menu click All Programs at the bottom: Now click on Accessories, and Paint: Page 66 of 70

67 When Paint starts up, click the Paste button at the top: The image you captured on the desktop should now appear in the main viewing area. If it doesn't, it means you haven't captured the image. So try pressing your "Prt Scrn" button again. You now need isolate just that part of the image you're interested in. After all, there's no sense in sending anyone the whole of the screen when you only want to capture the error message. To isolate just part of the screen, click the Select button on the Paint toolbar: Page 67 of 70

68 Now move your mouse back on to your image. The cursor should have changed shape. Hold down your left mouse button on the top left of whatever it is you're trying to capture. Keep your left mouse button held down and drag to the bottom right. In the image below, we're trying to isolate some code and the error message: Unfortunately, Paint is not very good when it comes to resizing a selected area. You might think the white squares are sizing handles. But if you hold your mouse over one and try to drag to a new position it will cut and move the image instead. It's better if you press the Select button again. This will deselect your chosen area, and you can have another go. If you accidentally move your selected area, click the Undo icon at the very top left of Paint: Once you have a selection, right-click this area and you'll see a menu appear. Select Crop, and the image will shrink to your selected area: Page 68 of 70

69 Paint is also not very good at refining the cropped area, either. If you want better screenshots then you would need a decent image editor like the free Gimp (which is quite hard to use). Photoshop Elements is also a very good image editor, and is well worth paying money for. The best professional image editor is Photoshop, (Elements is a stripped down version of this), but it's quite expensive. For quick screenshots and basic cropping, however, Paint should be fine. Once you have cropped your image down to size, you can save it by clicking the dropdown menu at the top: Page 69 of 70

70 From the menu, select Save As to see the following options: As you can see, there is a bewildering array of options! If you want to keep the file size down to a minimum, use GIF or PNG. (GIF is the more common of the two.) For better quality images, but large file sizes, use JPEG. If you're sending somebody a screenshot in an , GIF is the better option. But you should now know how to take a screenshot, and crop the image in Microsoft Paint. Page 70 of 70