Arranging files in windows xp

Second, you can keep your disk running in good shape by periodically weeding out old files. Third, with a good setup, backing up files is easier. Chapter 17 covers backing up files. Good file management does not take that long and involves just a few key ideas. This chapter covers these ideas as well as explains the important tasks for working with files.

Windows XP includes many tools for file management, and the most commonly used tool is My Computer. My Computer is an icon that represents all the drives on your system. After you open this window, you can then open any of your drives to see the folders and files contained on those drives. Click Start and My Computer. If you have added the shortcut icon for My Computer to your desktop, you can double-click this icon to open My Computer. Figure 3. To help you keep your documents organized, Windows sets up several special folders in addition to My Computer.

You can view the contents of any of these folders by clicking Start and then clicking the folder you want to open. In addition to your hard drive drive C: , you may have a floppy drive drive A:.

Your computer may also have additional drives including other hard drives or additional media drives such as CD or DVD drives. If you have more than one drive, they are named D:, E:, and so on. By default, Windows XP groups the drives by type, as shown in Figure 3. Opening a drive is easy: Double-click the icon representing the drive you want to open see Figure 3. Note the different icons for folders and files.

Each page icon represents a document file. Each folder icon represents a folder on your hard drive. You can nest folders within folders to organize the contents of your hard drive.

To open a folder, double-click its icon. You can continue opening folders until you see the file or folder you want to work with. To close a window, click the Close button. Each folder window includes a toolbar that you can use to navigate from folder to folder.

You can go back and forth among previously viewed content windows. You can also move up one level in the folder structure to the containing folder. For instance, you might move up to the desktop level and then open drives and folders to move to another branch of the folder structure. Table 3. You can search for a file, sort the contents, change what is displayed, group icons, and more in the folder window.

For information on these tasks, see Chapter 16, "Viewing and Finding Files. Return to a previously viewed folder. You can go forward only if you have clicked Back to go back a step. Back up all the files to a hard drive or disc, delete the files off the old hard drive, and use a computer to transfer the back-up onto the new hard drive. Yes No. Not Helpful 4 Helpful 4. No, resetting or reimaging a device will reinstall all of the software and the operating system information but it will delete all user data.

Not Helpful 3 Helpful 1. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. By using this service, some information may be shared with YouTube. If you want to make sure no one can recover any of your files, you'll need to use a program like Eraser or DBAN Darik's Boot and Nuke to overwrite the hard drive.

Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0. The only guaranteed way to ensure that no one can ever recover your files is to physically destroy the hard drive. You Might Also Like How to. How to. About This Article. Written by:. Co-authors: Updated: March 4, Categories: XP Instructions. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read , times. Is this article up to date? Cookies make wikiHow better. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Subscribe without commenting E-Mail:.

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Copyright Watching The Net. All Rights Reserved. Double-click again and they will be sorted by descending date. You can sort the file name column in the same way--double-click to alphabetize, again to reverse alphabetize; or the size column--once to sort by ascending size, again by descending. BrickYard, If you arrange by date using the Details display you can then change the display to either icons or thumbnails and the display will still be sorted by date.

Alternatively, in the icons display right-click in the right pane and choose Sort by Modified from the context menu. Denny, Yes I know that part, but what I want to do is when I create a folder that contains many files I want to arrange them according to the date that I add to the file name. Thanks for you help. If that's correct, right click on the column heading in the "Details" view, and add "Created" to the list.

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