Objectives of this Tutorial
Generally: The objective of this section is to teach you effective file management.
Specifically: On completion of this section you will be able to:
- Understand file names and extensions
- Find files
- View the contents of a file
- Rename and delete files
- Move and copy files
- Format a floppy disk
- Copy files to a floppy disk
- Undo file operations
- Use the Recycle Bin to restore deleted files
- Create desktop shortcuts
Understanding Files
The term file refers to the documents, spreadsheets, records or other data you enter on to your PC. The more you work with your PC the more files you will create. Frequently you will want to go back to files created earlier to amend them, add to them or print them out. To enable you to find them again you need to organise your files into folders and provide file names which are meaningful.
File Names
You can use file names of up to 256 characters, including spaces. For example:
This is a file with a long name including letters, numbers 1234567890,
and characters !£$%^&()-_+=:#@~.;,
is a valid file name.
However, certain characters are not allowed:
" * : \ | / ? < >
If you use any of these characters you will get a warning message and be unable to save the file. Remove the offending character and save again.
Warning: If you will be sharing files with other users who are not using Windows 98 or Windows 95, you will need to ensure your file names are limited to eight characters long. Long file names will be truncated to eight characters once they have been accessed on an MS-DOS or Windows 3.x system. For example, a file called monthlyreport would end up monthl~1.
To see all file name extensions
- Open My Computer or Windows Explorer
- Select the folder you want to look at
- From the View menu, select Folder Options...
- Click the View tab
- Select the Show all files option button
- Deselect Hide file extensions for known file types
- Click Apply and then OK
Continued...
