Information and Communication Technology

3.3.19 Windows Explorer

It is used to view and organize your drives, folders and files. The list of drives and folders is on the left, and the contents of the selected folder or drive is on the right.

Opening the explorer

1. Click the start button on the taskbar, select programmes, Windows Explorer.
2. Right click on the start button and select Explore option in the shortcut menu.

Changing Displays : You can view the icons in the contents pane a number of ways as shown below:

• Large Icons show the icons scattered in the window. Only the names of the files or folders appear below the icons.
• Small Icons show the icons in reduced size lined up alphabetically in a row.
• List looks like small icons except that it's organized vertically.
• With Details the small icons are listed vertically, with each row providing information on the size(in kilobytes) of the file, the type of the file or folder, and the date and time last modified. You can click the column headers to sort the files by the information in that column. Click once for ascending order (a_z) and again for descending order (z_a).

Selecting Files and Folders

• Single file or folder Click the file or folder icon, or use the arrow keys to move the highlighting to file or folder icon you want to select.
• Several files or folders that are adjacent Click the first file or folder icon, hold down the Shift key, and click the last file or folder icon.
• Several files or folders that are non adjacent Click the first file or folder icon, hold down the Ctrl key, and click each of the additional file or folder icons you want.
• All the file or folder icons in the window Choose Select All from Edit menu or press Ctrl A.
• All except the file or folder icon you have currently selected Choose Invert selection option from Edit menu.

Renaming files and folders

1. Select the file or folder you want to rename.
2. Choose Rename option in File menu or click the icon within right mouse button and choose Rename from the pop-up menu, or click once on the name. The name gets a box around it and the text is highlighted.
3. Enter the text for the new name.
4. Press Enter key.

Searching for a file

1. Open the Explorer.
2. Select the drive you want to search.
3. Choose Find, Files or Folders from Tools menu.
4. In the Named box, enter the name of the file you want to find. If you don't know the complete name, use an asterisk(*) to substitute for the beginning or end of the name(such as *a). Choose Case Sensitive from Options menu if you want to find a file that is uppercase but not find a file with a same name that is lowercase.
5. The Look in box should already show the name of the drive you selected.
6. To search through all the folders in the specified drive, check Include Subfolders.
7. If you want to look in a specific folder, click Browse to open the browse for folder dialog box and select the folder you want to search. Click Ok to return to the find dialog box.
8. Click Find Now.
9. When the search is complete, a list of files or folders matching your search criteria appears at the bottom of the dialog box. Double click the file you want to open.
10. Click New search to clear the search criteria so you can search for another file.

You can also search for files based on the date they were created or last modified:

1. Follow steps 1 through 7 of finding a file. Don’t enter a file name in the Named box.
2. Click the Date Modified tab of the find dialog box.
3. Select Find All Files Created or Modified. Then choose one of the three options: Between(enter the starting and ending date) to look for all files created or modified between those dates, During the previous x Months( where x is the number of months) to return a list of files created or modified in the specified number of previous months, or During the previous x Days(where x is the number of days).
4. Click Find Now.

Use the advanced options of search to look for files by type, files that contain text strings, or files that are a particular size.

1. Follow steps 1 through 7 of finding a file. You Don’t need enter a file name in the Named box.
2. Click the Advanced tab of the find dialog box.
3. From the drop down list, select the type of file or folder you are seeking. The list depends on the types of applications or other programmes you have loaded on your computer.
4. If you are searching for files containing specific text, enter all or a portion of that text in the Containing text box.
5. To search for files of a particular size, choose At least or At most from the Size Is drop down list and enter the number of kilobytes in the KB box.
6. Click Find Now.

Closing Explorer

To close the windows Explorer, Choose Close option from File menu or click the Close button on the title bar or press Alt F4.