Continuing our tour of File Explorer, in this lesson we will look at some more techniques for viewing and managing files on your computer.

Transcription

1 12 - Advanced File Explorer Techniques Continuing our tour of File Explorer, in this lesson we will look at some more techniques for viewing and managing files on your computer Delving into details view Recall how in lesson 11.5 we showed you the different folder views. Back then we said that details view was the view that power users used the most. Details view lets you find out all kinds of information about files on your computer. Figure 12.1 shows a folder open in details view in File Explorer. Figure 12.1 Details view In figure 12.1, we can see the date that the files were modified, the size of the files in kilobytes (KB) and any tags that are applied (we cover tags in a moment). Right clicking on a column heading in details view enables us to add a new column, figure 12.2 demonstrates this. Figure 12.2 Customizing details view by adding more columns of information

2 After right clicking on a column heading, adding or removing new columns is just a matter of clicking on them from the menu. By clicking on More at the bottom of the menu you can choose from hundreds of different types of meta-data (data about data). Not all metadata is relevant to all kinds of files, for example a picture of your back garden isn t usually going to have an Album Artist and your favourite music file is unlikely to have Dimensions, at least not the kind that can be measured in inches or centimetres. You can also sort your list of files by any of the columns you currently have displayed in details view. Simply click on the column to sort by that criteria, click again on the same column to reverse the sorting order (i.e. change from sorting from high to low or A to Z to low to high or Z to A) Preview pane When you want to open a file in File Explorer, you double click on it. If you are sifting through a lot of files at once however, you might find it more convenient to use the Preview pane. To enable or disable the Preview pane, first click on the View tab on the ribbon. Figure 12.3 shows the Preview pane opened, the icon circled is the icon you will need to click to open the Preview pane. Figure 12.3 A File Explorer window with the Preview pane enabled. Notice how the selected file appears in the preview on the right

3 12.3 Details pane The Details pane can be activated by clicking the icon below Preview pane. The Details pane gives us a huge amount of information about the currently selected file. Figure 12.4 shows an example of the Details pane. Figure 12.4 Viewing the Details pane Not only can you view these details using the Details pane, you can edit some of them too. Click on the text next to Tags, Title or Authors for instance, to edit that information. By adding tags to your pictures, you can more easily find them when you search for them. For instance, if we tagged the hedgehog picture with the Animal tag, it would show up when we searched on the taskbar for Animal. We cover searching in more detail in lesson 22. The types of metadata that are displayed when you click on a file actually depend on what kind of file you are viewing. In figure 12.5 we can see the Details pane for a PNG picture file.

4 Figure 12.5 Details for a PNG picture file are different to a JPG picture file Notice that although the file shown in figure 12.5 is still a picture file, it s a different type of picture file and unfortunately this type of image doesn t support tags and other metadata Sort and group by options File Explorer also has extensive options for sorting and grouping your data. On the View tab on the ribbon, there are two buttons that control how your data is sorted. Figure 12.6 shows these buttons. Figure 12.6 Sort by and Group By buttons on the ribbon

5 The Sort by button performs the same operation as clicking on a column heading, that is, it lets you sort your files by any of the currently visible columns. The group by button will change the File Explorer window by grouping all your files into convenient clusters. Figure 12.7 shows a pictures folder with the files grouped by name. Figure 12.7 Files in a folder grouped by name Grouping your files by a certain criteria can make sifting through larger folders much more manageable Check boxes, extensions and hidden items There s one last part of the View tab on the ribbon that we will be covering in this lesson. Figure 12.8 shows these particular options. Figure 12.8 Turning on Item check boxes

6 By turning on Item check boxes, Windows will place a small square box either over the file or folder icon (with medium or large icon viewing mode) or to the left of the icon (in any other viewing mode). These check boxes make it easier to select and deselect multiple files. Particularly when working with File Explorer using a stylus or your finger, being able to tap a check box like this is much easier than calling up the on-screen keyboard to press the control or alt keys. We cover working with multiple files in lesson 14. The file name extensions option allows you to quickly show or hide the file name extension on a file name. File name extensions are three or more letters at the end of a file name. We cover file name extensions in lesson Finally, the hidden items option lets you show files and folders that are normally hidden. We discuss this in detail in lesson Navigation pane The Navigation pane is the list of items on the left hand side of the File Explorer window. You can see it clearly in figure 12.5 for instance. You can also toggle the Navigation pane off or on from the View tab on the ribbon. There are several useful functions you can carry out on the Navigation pane. At the very top of the pane are the Quick access folders and locations. If you find you are often using the same folder, you can pin it to the Quick access section. Right click on the folder in the File Explorer window and choose Pin to Quick access. To unpin a file or folder from Quick access, just right click on it in the Quick access section and choose Unpin from Quick access. Below that is the OneDrive icon that takes you to your OneDrive online or Cloud storage, when configured. We cover OneDrive in lesson 32. The other short-cuts in the Navigation pane will take you to various places which we will be covering in later lessons. The Homegroup folders are shared folders on your network. Homegroups are covered in lesson 55. There are also short-cuts to This PC (previously known as Computer ), which lets you explore all the drives attached to your local computer (we cover that in lesson 19) and if your computer is on a network, the network short-cut will let you browse available network storage locations.