File Management
My Documents
With each recent version of Windows, the My Documents folder has gained increasing prominence. With Windows XP, My Documents becomes the central focus for all file management, with the old Windows Explorer being relegated to a distant sub-menu on the Start menu. Really, My Documents and Windows Explorer are two views of the same thing: Open My Documents and click the Folders button on the toolbar and what you see is Windows Explorer. The only difference is that the My Documents view features the new Task Pane on the left; Windows Explorer replaces the Task Pane with a hierarchical folder tree.
Experienced Windows users will probably want to switch to Windows Explorer view for some file management tasks, but don't be fooled by My Documents cute looks: It is, in fact, a very smart file manager. The Task Pane, which changes depending on the type of object you select, makes everything from folder creation to copying multiple files to navigating to other parts of your computer a breeze.
When you have no item selected, the Task Pane in My Documents displays options to create a new folder, publish the folder to the Web, or share the folder. It also has links to the Desktop, Shared Documents (on systems with multiple users), My Computer and My Network Places.
My Documents also provides quick access to the three special multimedia folders, My Pictures, My Music and My Videos.
Noticed something odd about My Documents? It no longer lives in the root folder of your main drive. If you're trying to track it down, look instead in \Documents and Settings\username\My Documents.
There's a reason for this shift. XP makes it much easier for multiple users to share a single computer and its design incorporates this multi-user philosophy. Each user has his or her own My Documents folder. That means the My Documents shortcut on the Start Menu points to a different location depending on who's currently logged in.
So, if Tomasina, Dana and Harriet share the same computer, when Dana is logged on My Documents will open:
\Documents and Settings\Dana\My Documents
When Harriet is logged on, it will open:
\Documents and Settings\Harriet\My Documents
If you want to share documents or folders with other users of the same computer, place them in the \Shared Documents folder (\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents) instead of My Documents.
Task Panes are the hottest new feature of XP's interface. Each folder sports its own Task Pane, which morphs to reflect the folder's contents or the currently selected file.
Every folder's Task Pane contains at least three sections: File and Folder Tasks, providing file management options; Other Places, providing links to other important folders and functions; and Details, where information about the current folder or file is displayed, including preview images for graphics, photos and video files. There are also special folders - My Pictures, My Videos, My Music - which have an additional section in the Task Pane dedicated to content-specific tasks.

This task orientation makes file management on XP considerably easier than in its predecessors. For instance, to move a group of files, select them and either drag them to one of the Other Places links, or click the Move The Selected Items task, and select a destination from the dialog which appears. Other common file tasks include copy, rename, delete, print, e-mail, and post to the Web.
   
The six XP views are:
List View. This shows a list of files and folders, with a small icon plus the file or folder's name. List View is useful for displaying folders which contain many files, as it compresses a lot of information into a small space.

Icons View. This view replaces the old Small Icons view. It displays a mid-sized icon for each file or folder.

Tile View. This view replaces the old Large Icons view, displaying a large icon for each file or folder. It's something of a space waster, so you're only likely to use it in folders which contain few files.
Thumbnails View. Thumbnails View displays an even larger icon for each file and folder than Tile View. But it goes one step further and displays a small-scale image instead of an icon for graphics files and folders containing images, making it very useful for previewing image files 		Filmstrip View. This view is only available in picture folders, such as My Pictures, Shared Pictures and other folders based on the Pictures or Photo Album folder templates (see technote below). It lets you view your photos in a strip across the bottom of the folder, with the selected file shown enlarged above. Controls let you navigate through your photos and rotate the selected image left or right. Note that rotating an image actually alters your original file, replacing it with the rotated image.


Details View. Like List View, Details Views shows small icons with file and folder names. In addition, it lets you see additional information depending on the type of folder, arranged in columns. For standard document folders the Details View shows the file size, type and date modified by default. For music files it displays filename, size, type, artist, album title, year recorded, track number and duration. For picture files it shows name, size, type, date modified, date picture taken and dimensions (resolution). You can move any of the columns by clicking-and-dragging the column title from its current location to another column. You also have complete control over the columns displayed in any folder: Simply open the folder and select Choose Details from the View Menu to see a list of 32 different categories, including such esoteric details as Camera Used, Bit Rate and Product Version. Clearly some of these details will be meaningless for some files, but if you have a mess of files all tumbled in together in a folder, the details view coupled with a snazzy new feature called Show In Groups, can turn the mess into beautiful order.

Group 'em
Show In Groups is one of those subtle new touches which adds so much to Windows XP. It works in conjunction with the various file views and goes hand in hand with file sorting. It really comes into its own when used with the Details View.
Here's a good way to experiment with it:
1. Open a folder containing multiple files, preferably of different filetypes.
2. Right-click in an empty spot and choose Views from the pop-up menu, then select any view except List View.
3. Right-click once more and choose Arrange Icons By -> Show In Groups from the pop-up menu.
4. Now right-click again, select Arrange Icons By and choose any of the different sort options (name, size, et cetera) to change the sort order.
5. Experiment with different views by right-clicking and choosing Views and then choosing any of the view except List View.
In standard folders, Show In Groups provides an easy way to categorise your files and get a handle on the contents with a single glance. It works even better in audio and picture folders, where it gives you a whole different way of organising your files.

 

 

Step-by-step: Categorising your files
1. XP's Show In Groups option gives a quick snapshot of the contents of a folder and helps you sort out your documents. For example, here you can see the Details View using Arrange By Type and Show In Groups.

2. Use the Arrange Icons By right-click option to sort your files by different criteria and quickly switch perspectives. The available criteria change according to the folder type.

3. For example, by choosing Arrange Icons By Modified, you can quickly tell which files you've been working on recently and which have remained untouched for weeks, months or years.

 4. Things get a lot more interesting if you use XP's extended file properties to categorise files. To categorise a file, right-click it and choose Properties from the pop-up menu, click the Summary tab, and type a word or phrase in the Category box. For example, you could categorise your word processing documents as correspondence, reports, proposals, essays and so on. It takes a little extra effort to categorise files, especially as XP doesn't let you change the category property on multiple files simultaneously, but it pays offs later on.

5. To take advantage of your categories, flip over to Details View,
select Choose Details from the View Menu, and add the Category column to the view.
6. Now right-click in the folder and choose Arrange Icons By -> Category, making sure the Show In Groups option is also selected. The result is instant organisation. This method provides a useful alternative to divvying up your files into sub-folders; instead, you can have large groups of files easily accessible in a single folder and still maintain order.

 

 

    
Quick tasks
For almost all tasks involving files, Windows offers a choice of techniques for achieving your aim. In XP, the Task Panes provide additional ways of performing these tasks.
Quick task: Move files or folders
To move items using the Task Panes:
1. Select the files and folders you wish to move and click the Move task. A Move Items dialog appears.
2. Navigate through the folders until you find the destination folder, then click the Move button.
To move the items to a new folder:
1. Navigate to the folder within which you wish to place the new folder.
2. Click Make New Folder.
3. Type in a name for the folder and press Enter.
4. Click Move.
An alternative method to move files: If the destination is listed in the Other Places section of the Task Pane, simply drag-and-drop the files onto the appropriate Other Places link.
Quick task: Copy files or folders
To copy items:
1. Select the files and folders you wish to copy.
2. Click the Copy task.
3. In the Copy Items dialog, navigate through the folders until you find the destination folder (or use Make New Folder to create a new destination), and click Copy.
Alternatively, if the destination is listed in Other Places, press and hold Ctrl while you drag and drop the files onto the appropriate other places link. When you release the mouse button, a pop-up menu will ask whether you wish to Copy the files or Cancel the action.
Quick task: Rename files or folders
To rename an item:
1. Click the file or folder you wish to rename and click the Rename task. The item's name will be highlighted, ready for editing.
2. Type in the new name and press Enter.
geekgirl.tip: Rename multiple files
In Windows XP, it's possible to rename multiple files, something you couldn't do in earlier versions of Windows (but was a snap to do in that old fossil, DOS!). Here's how:
1. Select the files you wish to rename.
2. Right-click any of the selected files and choose Rename from the pop-up menu (or, alternatively, press the F2 key). You'll note that the remaining selected files are still selected in gray.
3. Type the new name for the selected file and press Enter. All the selected files are given the same name followed by a number in parentheses. For example, if you select three files and rename the first file Revised Agenda.doc, the other two files will be renamed Revised Agenda (1).doc and Revised Agenda (2).doc.
Quick task: Publish files to the Web
To publish files to the Web:
1. Make sure you have an active Internet connection, then select the items you wish to upload to the Web.
2. Click the Publish to the Web task.
3. The Web Publishing Wizard will appear. Step-by-step, it lets you confirm which files you wish to publish, select a Web host for your files (if you don't have one already, you will be shown a list to choose from), and then upload your files to your own site. Follow the instructions in the wizard to publish your files.
Note: If you want to publish an entire folder's contents, Publish to the Web will copy all the files within that folder, but not files contained within sub-folders of that folder.
Quick task: E-mail files
To send files via e-mail:
1. Select the items you wish to e-mail and click the E-mail task.
2. If any of the items you have selected are graphics files, Windows XP will offer to resize them. This is important because many Internet Service Providers put a limit on the size of e-mail attachments (frequently as low as 2M). If you click the Show More Options link in the Send Pictures by E-mail dialog, you'll be able to select between sizes (640 x 480, 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768). When you've made your selections, click OK and a new e-mail message window will open with the selected files included as attachments and the file names used as the Subject for the e-mail.
3. Fill in the recipient details, change the subject if you wish, add your own message, and click Send.
Note: If you choose to e-mail an entire folder's contents, only the files within the folder will be attached; files within sub-folders will be ignored.

Sending e-mail attachments in XP is drop-dead easy. It even resizes graphics files before sending them.
Quick task: Delete files or folders
Deleting files or folders couldn't be simpler:
1. Click the items you wish to delete.
2. Click the Delete task.
Quick task: Share files or folders
You can share files and folders with others who use your computer or with other computers on a network. To share a file or folder with other users of your computer, simply drag the item to Shared Documents in Other Places.
If your computer is networked, to share a folder:
1. Select the folder.
2. Click the Share task.
3. Choose the appropriate options in the Network Sharing and Security section of the Properties dialog.
This same Properties dialog, by the way, lets you do the reverse - that is, ensure that no other users can view the contents of a folder. All you do is choose the Make This Folder Private option in the Local Sharing and Security section of the Properties dialog box.
Folder templates
The Task Panes add intelligence to My Documents and standard folders. Even more accommodating is the way Windows XP provides specialized folders for multimedia content, with each special folder type offering its own selection of tasks.
You'll find links to the My Pictures and My Music folders, for storing graphics and sound files respectively, on the newly revamped Start menu. You can also create a My Videos folder for animations and movies. Each of these folders has its own Task Pane, with content-specific options such as View As A Slideshow for pictures, and Copy To Audio CD for music. The My Pictures folder also has an additional Filmstrip view for displaying the contents of the folder.
The specialized Task Panes are not limited to the three multimedia folders mentioned above. If you create a new folder, the first item you place in that folder - graphics file, audio file, video or non-multimedia file - will determine the folder's type and the Task Pane type: Pictures, Music, Video and standard respectively.


Choosing a folder template boosts the IQ of your multimedia folders.
You can also nominate a folder template for any new folder you create. There are seven templates to choose from: Documents (for files of any type); Pictures (for large numbers of graphics files); Photo Albums (for limited numbers of graphics files); Music (for audio files and playlists); Music Artists (for audio files by a single composer or artist); Music Albums (for tracks from one album); and Videos. To select a template for a folder:
1. Right-click the folder's icon or, if you have the folder already open, in a blank space within the folder, and choose Properties from the pop-up menu.
2. Click the Customize tab.
3. Select the appropriate template from the Use This Folder Type As A Template drop-down list and click OK.
By choosing a folder template appropriate to the folder's content, you gain a whole new set of organizational tools. The Details view (click the Views button on the toolbar of any folder and select Details) of Music Artist and Music Album folders, for example, now displays information such as album title, track number, track length, and so on. You can quickly resort the file display by clicking any of the column headers in details view.
Similarly, you can right-click within the folder, choose Arrange Icons By from the menu and then sort your audio files by artist, album, or any other identifying characteristic. There's also a Group option which lets you group files by artist, album, author, et cetera.
You'll find XP understands a lot more about your media files than previous versions of Windows. Right-click a file and choose Properties, then click Summary to see extensive information about the file.
Other enhancements
Some of the more interesting new features in XP are subtler than the Task Panes. For example, you can now right-click a file and choose Send To <CD writer> to burn a file to CD.
As with Windows Me, Zip compression is built into Windows XP. Right-click a file or folder and select Send To Compressed Folder to compress files and place them in Zip-compatible folders, identifiable by a zippered folder icon.


One of XP's little touches: Visual confirmation when replacing one image file with another.
Another new feature is the auto-recognition of disk contents. Insert a CD, floppy, Zip or Jaz disk and a dialog pops up proffering a menu of choices appropriate to the content. For a blank CD, XP will offer to burn files directly to the CD; for a CD containing photos, XP offers to run the CD as a slideshow, print the photos, copy the photos to a folder, and so on.