Lab 2 File system - Haywood Community College



|CIS 110 Introduction to Computers |

|Hands-on Task – File Explorer and the Windows 10 File System |

Introduction

In this worksheet, you will explore the Windows file system, common file extensions, and ways to manage the file system on your computer. Throughout this exercise you will use the file system utility program File Explorer which is configured with 2 sections referred to as a right pane and a left pane.

Objectives

Upon completing this set of exercises, you should be able to:

• Create valid names for files and folders

• Use the file management features of application software and Windows File Explorer

• Use the drag and drop method to move files and folders about the file system

Preliminaries

You will need to use File Explorer for the following exercises. There are a several ways to open this program. The following are two common and easy methods to start File Explorer:

• Right-click the Start button, then click the File Explorer option on the Start menu

– Or –

• Press and hold down the Windows key on your keyboard and tap the letter 'e'

You will also need to set your view in File Explorer to match the one used in the following examples.

1. Click View on the menu bar in the upper portion of File Explorer to display a list of options.

2. In the Layout section of the ribbon, choose the Details option.

3. In the Show/hide section of the ribbon, if File name extensions is checked, click to uncheck it.

4. Click the right-pointing arrow next to This PC to expand this list and display devices for this computer.

File Explorer Overview

[pic]

Section 1: File Explorer:

1. Scan the left pane and click once on any arrows (they look like greater than signs) pointing downward such as the Windows (C:) entry shown in the figure shown above.  The Quick Access and This PC sections are often initially expanded in Windows 10 and can be collapsed by clicking the downward pointing arrow so it points to the right instead of down. This collapses the details for that device or folder. When finished you should have just a few items in the left pane such as Quick Access, OneDrive, This PC, and possibly Network.

2. In the left pane, click one time on the arrow pointing to the right (the > sign) next to This PC. A list of items appears displaying the different storage devices available on your computer plus some special categories of items such as Desktop, Documents, Music, Pictures, and so on.

3. Click one time on the > sign next to Windows (C:). As noted before, this entry might appear as Local Disk (C:) or OS (C:). All the folders stored in the root directory of your hard disk storage device are displayed underneath and slightly to the right of the Windows (C:) icon.

4. Click one time on the Program Files folder in the left pane (not the > sign, but the actual folder or text Program Files). The folders containing programs on your computer are displayed in the right pane.  Programs installed on your computer usually create a new folder within the Program Files folder and place all files required for that program in the new folder.  It’s usually NOT a good idea to make any changes to the Program Files folder.  (Note: a warning screen may appear when clicking on the Program Files folder telling you not to modify its contents.  If so, click on the message Show the contents of this folder)

5. Click once on the arrow pointing downward right next to Windows (C:) in the left pane.  This collapses the display of folders stored in the root directory of your hard disk storage device.

6. Click the arrow pointing to the right (> sign) next to Documents to display folders contained within this folder.  It’s quite possible there will be none there but it’s very common to have folders within folders in the Windows file system.

7. Click one time on the text Documents (NOT the > sign) in the left pane.  This will display the contents of the Documents folder in the right pane.  Note that the display of the Documents folder in the right pane may contain both files and folders. The left pane only shows storage locations and folders where the right pane shows the contents, both files and folders, of the folder selected in the left pane.

Section 2: Filenames, Extensions, and Formats

Now we will begin creating files in the file system. If you are at the step we left off with in the last section, you should have File Explorer open with Documents selected in the left pane and the contents of this folder displayed in the right pane.

1. Click the Home tab.

2. Click the New item icon located in the New section immediately to the right of the New folder icon.

3. A selection of file types will appear.  Select the Text Document file type.

2. The new Text Document appears in the right pane with the words New Text Document highlighted which is prompting you to start typing a name for this document.

3. Try to name the document My:NewDocument.  You’ll find that you cannot type the : character.  The Windows Operating System does not allow the characters \ / : * ? < > “ | in a document name.

4. Name the document My New Text and press Enter.

5. Notice the type of the document in this case is Text Document. This file type tells Windows which program can be used to open the document.

6. Double click the icon next to the text My New Text.

7. You may get a question How do you want to open this type of file (.txt)?  If so, choose Notepad.

8. The application program Notepad is normally used to open the document. Windows looked at the type, Text, and determined what programs would be appropriate to edit that type of data file.

9. Type the following words in the document “This is my new text document.” Then click File ---> Save.  

10. Close Notepad by clicking the X button in the upper right-hand corner.

11. Click the New item icon located immediately to the right of the New folder icon as you did earlier with the Text document.

12. A selection of file types will appear once again.  This time select the Microsoft Word Document file type.

13. Name the document My New Word.

14. Double click the icon next to the text My New Word.

15. This time the operating system started Microsoft Word since that application opens this type of document.

16. Type the following words in the document “This is my new text document.”

17. Locate the diskette icon immediately above the File tab in the upper left corner.  Move the mouse over the diskette icon, wait a moment, and a tip should appear with the word “Save”.  Click the diskette icon to save the Word document.

18. Close Microsoft Word by clicking the X button in the upper right-hand corner.

File Explorer usually hides the filename extension which indicates the type and format of the file.  This ability to hide the filename extension is controlled by the File name extensions option you unchecked back on page 1 of this exercise.  If this option were unchecked and file extensions displayed, the two files we just created would actually be displayed as My New Text.txt and My New Word.rtf.  These files should appear on your computer as shown below without these extensions.

[pic]

Section 3: File Management

Finally, we’ll create a folder structure and move files between the folders using the drag and drop feature.

1. Make sure Documents is selected (highlighted) in the left pane.  If not, click once in the left pane on the text Documents.

2. Now we’ll create a folder inside the Documents folder.  This can be accomplished by selecting the Home tab in the top left corner and then clicking the New folder icon. A new folder can also be created by clicking the New item icon as you did before and selecting Folder. The New folder icon is just a quicker means to accomplish the same thing.

3. Name this folder My New Folder and press Enter.

4. If the new folder does not appear immediately in the left pane, position the mouse pointer to Documents in the left pane and you should see a > next to Documents.  Click once on the > sign to display the new folder in the folder structure of the left pane.

5. Position the mouse to the My New Text document, click and hold down the mouse button, and then begin moving the mouse pointer over to the My New Folder folder in the left pane.  When the mouse is pointing to the My New Folder folder, you’ll see the folder name highlighted.  With the folder name highlighted, release the mouse button.  This causes the My New Text document to be moved to this folder.  This process is referred to as “drag and drop”.   

6. Double click on My New Folder in the right pane and see that it now contains the My New Text document.

7. Click one time on Documents in the left pane.

8. Using the same procedure as in step 5 above, drag the My New Word document to My New Folder.

9. Click one time on My New Folder in the left pane and see it now contains both documents.

10. Now create a subfolder inside of My New Folder by clicking the New folder icon as you did in step 2. In this case, the folder being created will reside inside My New Folder since My New Folder is currently displayed in the right pane

11. Name this subfolder Text Documents.

12. Position the mouse to My New Folder in the left pane and click the > sign to expand the display of this folder.  The Text Documents folder you just created should be listed as a subfolder of My New Folder. 

13. Use the instructions from step 5 to drag the file My New Text from the right pane and drop it into the Text Documents folder in the left pane. 

14. Now use the instructions from step 10 to create another folder inside My New Folder.  Name this folder Word Documents.

15. Drag the file My New Word from the right pane over to the left pane and drop it into the Word Documents folder.

16. My New Folder should now contain two subfolders called Text Documents and Word Documents but should no longer contain any files.

Note that you can continue creating subfolders in this manner to logically lay out the information on your storage devices to facilitate retrieving data for yourself.  At this point, your File Explorer display should be similar to what you see on the following pages.

If you click on New Folder in the left pane, your display should look something like the one below.  You won’t have all the folders shown in this example but should have New Folder shown as a folder within My Documents.  In addition, you should have Text Documents and Word Documents listed as folders contained within New Folder.

[pic]

Clicking on Text Documents in the left pane should give you a display like this one.  The Text Documents folder contains one file called My New Text.

[pic]

Clicking on Word Documents in the left pane should give you a display like this one.  The Word Documents folder contains one file called My New Word.

[pic]

You can continue creating sub-folders in this manner, logically laying out the files on your storage devices. Storing your files in an orderly manner will facilitate retrieval of this data at a later time.

Finally, to complete this exercise, I want to view and verify your directory structure. After that you can remove the files and directories placed on your server storage or leave them for future reference. The results of this exercise can easily be removed by right-clicking on New Folder and selecting Delete from the shortcut menu.

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File Explorer makes it easy to drill down through the levels of the directory hierarchy to locate a particular file or folder.

The right pane shows files, folders, or devices found within the device or folder currently selected in the left pane.

Any device or folder can be selected by clicking it.

The left pane displays your computer’s hierarchy of storage devices and folders.

The right pointing arrow can be used to expand a device or folder to display the next level of the hierarchy.

The arrow pointing down can be used to collapse a device or folder to hide levels of the hierarchy.

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