CREATING AND USING FILE FOLDERS

The Importance of Planning Before starting work on your actual computer, sit down with paper-and- pencil and plan your filing system. What categories do you want? Do any of these categories need breaking-down to multiple levels? Remember that you can always change your filing system at a later date.

What are Files / Folders? ‘Files’ are the individual items you create using computer programs – e.g. ‘Word’ documents, ‘Excel’ spreadsheets, etc. ‘Folders’ are the storage areas you create in which to put your files. (Note that you can also put folders inside other folders.) The folders can be both on your computer itself or else on external storage media.

Where do I put the folders? They can be stored either in your computer, or on external storage media, or both. External storage media include flash drives, DVDs/CDs, memory cards and external hard drives. If stored in your computer they can be either in your existing ‘Library’ folders or on (one of) your hard drive(s).

This is the File Explorer icon on your Task Bar Displaying Folders Use your File Explorer to examine the contents of all folders. Clicking on this will display the following screen . . . This is the File Explorer icon on your Task Bar

Displaying Folders (cont.)

Demonstration We’ll now go to our computers and explore what we’ve been talking about with respect to files and folders . . .