Quick Access Toolbar

The Quick Access Toolbar remains next to the program button at the top of the window (see Figure 5-3). This area allows you to single-click access to commonly used commands. It is customizable too, with the Down arrow to its right bringing up a list of additional buttons that you can add to the toolbar, including Undo, Delete, and Rename.

You can add and remove items from the Quick Access Toolbar by selecting and deselecting them in the toolbar options menu.

The Address Bar

Just below the Ribbon, which I will talk about in depth shortly, is the address bar, sometimes known as the breadcrumb bar. On the left of it are buttons to move backward and forward in the current view. These buttons remember where you have been and allow you to return to locations, even if they are out of the current folder tree (see Figure 5-4).

Next to these buttons is an up arrow that takes you one level up in the current folder hierarchy. To the right of the address bar is a search box that allows you to search for any type of file or text within a file. By default, the search prioritizes the contents of the current folder. For example, if you are looking at pictures, those pictures are prioritized in your search results over other types of documents.

The address bar is so called because it offers you ways back in the current folder tree that provide easy access to other parts of that tree (see Figure 5-5). Each of the two folder names has a small black arrow separating them.

If you click one of the arrows between folders, you are given quick links to jump to any other folder in that part of the tree. This can make it extremely quick and easy to navigate to different parts of your hard disk(s) and find what it is you are looking for.

The Navigation Pane

To the left of the window is the Navigation pane, which is split into different categories. In the first, Favorites, you can drag and drop folders (not files) that you want quick one-click access to, perhaps because you use them often.

Beneath the Favorite Links in the Navigation Pane are quick, expandable groups for the following:

• SkyDrive displays if you log in to your Windows 8.1 PC using a Microsoft account. It displays all the files and folders you have stored on SkyDrive and gives you quick access to them. If you are syncing your PC’s files with SkyDrive, this duplicates the user folders in This PC.
• HomeGroup, which I discuss in detail in Chapter 4, provides access to documents, pictures, music, and video that is shared on your home network using the HomeGroup feature.
• This PC, formerly known as Computer in File Explorer, displays all the hard disks and attached storage on your computer in addition to your user folders for your Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos.
• Network displays all available attached network locations, networked computers, and network storage.

Status Bar and Folder Options

Running along the bottom of File Explorer is the Status bar. It gives basic information about the current folder of the currently selected items, such as the number of files. Unlike with Windows 7, this Status bar doesn’t contain details about files; they have been moved to a Details pane, which I will talk about shortly.

You can turn the Status bar off in the Folder Options for File Explorer. It can be accessed by clicking the Options button under the View tab on the Ribbon and then clicking Change folder and search options. In the options that appear, you find the Folder Options under the View tab (see Figure 5-7).

In this list, you find a check box for Show status bar. Other controls are also very useful and include being able to uncheck the option to Show Drive letters for your hard disks; showing compressed NTFS drives in color; or unhiding protected operating system files, which can prove useful if you need to troubleshoot and repair a problem with Windows.

Another useful feature in the Folder Options is the Apply to Folders button that you can use to make all the folders on your PC (for general and mixed document types) look the same as the current folder. I will show you how to customize the views in File Explorer later in this chapter.

Main Explorer View

In the main File Explorer pane , you see all your files and folders, which can be arranged in a great many ways. You can also select files in the main view in several ways, including the following:

• Right-click: You can right-click a file or folder with your mouse to bring up a context menu of the actions you can perform on it.
• Tap and hold: You can tap and hold a folder or file to bring up the actions context menu.
• Hover the mouse: You can hover your mouse over a file or folder to bring up a check box to select the item. You can use this method to select multiple items if you want.

Hiding Picture File Names

One very useful feature that has not made it into the Ribbon is the ability to hide the file names of pictures in File Explorer. If you are looking at holiday photos or similar, why do you need to look at reams of DSCxxx file names anyway?

You can hide the file names for pictures by right-clicking in any blank space; then in the View menu, select Hide file names (see Figure 5-8).

File Explorer Ribbon

I have left the Ribbon until last because I want to spend a little more time on it and talk about each tab.

By default, the Ribbon in File Explorer is hidden, and you display it by clicking one of the tabs at the top of the window: File, Home, Share, and View. Other tabs can appear, however, such as Computer, Library, or Picture. These extra tabs contain functions specific to those file types. When the Ribbon is open, a pin icon appears on the right of the window. You can click this to lock the Ribbon so that it is always displayed.

I won’t discuss every Ribbon function in depth here, but I do want to concentrate on the Ribbon functions that I think are most useful, most interesting, or most likely to give you a valuable productivity boost.

You may find that the Ribbon is hidden in File Explorer and you can see only the tab names. If you click one of these, the Ribbon appears temporarily, but you can show and hide the Ribbon by clicking the small up/down arrow (this changes depending on whether the Ribbon is currently displayed or hidden) that appears next to the Help button on the far right of the tab name on the right of the window.

Copying and Moving Files in File Explorer

The feedback you get when copying and moving files in Windows 8.1 has significantly improved. There is more feedback and more control when duplicate copies of files are found. The copied file dialog is shown in Figure 5-14.

One of the most significant improvements to copy and move file operations is that all operations now appear in the same window. This means that if you have several copy or move operations running simultaneously, you now only have one window on your screen that contains them all.

The other significant improvement is the addition of a Pause button to the dialog. You can now pause, copy, and move operations if you need to do something else or put your computer to sleep at the end of the day. When you return to Windows, you can continue with the operation by unpausing it.

When you click More Details on a copy or move file dialog, you are shown a graph of the copy or move operation. This graph gives you live feedback on the current speed of the copy, the number of megabits per second being copied, and a filled graph showing how the speed of the copy has changed. This is useful for diagnosing problems with copy or move operations when something else is happening in the background.

The Replace dialogs have also been upgraded in Windows 8.1 (see Figure 5-15), as you will notice when you copy or move files into a folder or onto a drive where another copy already exists.

The Replace or Skip Files dialog is now much simpler with choices to replace or skip all the files, or to choose which ones you want to keep in the destination folder.

If you want to choose which files you want to keep or overwrite, this dialog has improved as well. You still have a check box to select everything to keep or replace, but each individual file is more easily identifiable.

Pictures have a thumbnail image, but other file types just display the associated program’s icon. This new dialog makes it much easier to decide which files to keep and which to replace than with Windows 7, in which you were given only text information such as the date and time stamps.

Creating a Library

You can add new folders to an existing Library (I show you how to do this shortly), but you can also create your own custom Libraries. I have one for Photos, in which where all my pictures are arranged by their tags. You might want a separate Library for your school, work, or household documents. You can have a Library for anything, and it’s a great way to organize files.

To create a new Library, perform the following steps:

1. Open File Explorer on the desktop.
2. Click Libraries in the left pane.
3. Right-click (or tap and hold with your finger) any blank space in the main Explorer window (see Figure 5-19).

   

   Figure 5-19. Creating a new Library

4. From the context menu, select New and then Library. You are presented with a new empty Library to which you need to give a name.
5. Once the Library is created, double-click it to open it.
6. Click the Include a Folder button and choose a folder to display in the Library (see Figure 5-20). You can add additional folders later (I will show you how to do this shortly).

   

   Figure 5-20. Including a folder in a Library

Changing the Way a Library Displays Files

You now see your folder listed in the Library, but it just looks like an ordinary explorer Window. It is now that the full flexibility of Libraries can be used because they can display content in ways that the normal Explorer folder view cannot.

1. To change the view, right-click (or tap and hold with your finger) in any blank space in the main window (see Figure 5-21).

   

   Figure 5-21. Changing the way a Library is displayed

2. From the context menu, click Arrange By and then your preferred choice by which to arrange the contents of the Library (see Figure 5-22). This action can be performed only by a right-click, not from the Ribbon. It is different from the Ribbon’s Sort By and Group By views.

   

   Figure 5-22. Choosing how to arrange files in a Library

You see that the Library is now arranged as you want it. In Figure 5-23, I have arranged a Photo Library by tag. Regardless of what folder the photographs are stored in, I can view all pictures of Brighton Pier (for example) just by opening the tagged group. A nice benefit.

These Brighton Pier photos may reside in a dozen or more different folders on my hard disk, but because they all have the same tag, they are all displayed together in the Library when I arrange the files by tag.

Managing Libraries

When you are viewing a Library, a Manage tab appears on the Ribbon (see Figure 5-24). This Library Tools tab contains tools for managing the library, including which folders are included within it, what type of content the Library is optimized for (to aid in displaying that content correctly), and whether the Library is displayed in the Navigation Pane. Here you can also change the icon for the Library to one of the standard Windows icons or to a custom .ico file of your choosing.

The folders included by default in the standard Windows 8.1 Libraries are the default folders found in C:User[Username]. In addition to the default folders, you can include other folders and remove folders in a Library. To add or remove folders from a Library, click Manage Library on the Manage tab in the Ribbon.

Clicking the Manage Library button on the Ribbon brings up the Photos Library Locations dialog with its simple Add and Remove buttons for Library locations. You must have at least one location for a Library, but you can specify as many as you want (see Figure 5-25).

Changing the Default Save Location

A question mark can be raised about where the default save locations for Documents, Music, Pictures, and Video will be when you add new folders to a Library. After all, when you save a file, where does it go? Into your Users folder on the C: drive? Into the Library somewhere? Into a specific folder in the Library?

In Chapter 12, I talk about how and why you should move your files away from Windows and onto a separate hard disk or partition to safeguard them, but one way to do it is to change the default save location for a Library. You can do this from the Library Tools tab on the Ribbon in File Explorer when a Library is being viewed.

On the left of the Ribbon, there is a Set Save Location button, which offers a drop-down menu of the folders contained within that Library. To change the default save location, simply click the relevant folder that you want all new files saved to (see Figure 5-26).

Adding Network Locations to Libraries

It’s fairly well known and established that you can’t add network locations to Libraries in Windows 8.1, as was the case with Windows 7 .  .  . or can you? In fact, it’s always been possible to add network locations to your Music, Pictures, and Videos Libraries. You do it in two ways in Windows 8.1.

The first way is to create a symbolic link between the Library and the folder on your network that contains the files you want to include:

1. Create a folder in your C:Users[Username] folder named after the folder you want to include.
2. Add this new folder to your Library.
3. Delete the folder from C:Users[Username], but do not delete it from the Library.
4. Open the Command Prompt window from the Win+X menu.
5. Type MKLINK /D C:Users Username FolderName \ NetworkLocation , substituting the correct paths to the folders.

This process adds the network location to the Library, but does not add it to the index, which means that the Library may be slow to refresh when you open it. (I will talk more about the Windows index later in this chapter.) A friendlier way to add a folder to a Library can be done using Windows Media Center. Note that in Windows 8.1, Windows Media Center is no longer a standard feature in the operating system, but is available as a chargeable add-on for Windows 8.1 Pro and brings with it DVD and Blu-ray playback. You can purchase an upgrade by clicking Add Features to Windows in the Control Panel.

Open Windows Media Center to add network locations containing Pictures, Music, and Video (but not Documents). From the main menu, click Settings Media Libraries.

You are presented with a wizard that allows you to add or remove folders to/from the Libraries. When asked where the files are located, select On Another Computer (see Figure 5-27). This displays network drives and allows you to add these locations to the Libraries.

All available network locations, including other computers on your network (that are switched on), appear in a collapsible list (see Figure 5-28). You can check and uncheck media folders to add to the Library. This is a fantastically simple workaround to what is otherwise a missing functionality in Windows Libraries.

Using Tags and Ratings to Organize Files

Tags and Ratings are two of the best ways to organize and categorize files. Tags are labels that help you find relevant documents. For example, you might have documents tagged as “work,” “school,” “household,” or “auto.” Thus, tags might help you locate documents related to your car quickly and easily.

If you have a lot of photos, you might label them “vacation,” “children,” or “Germany” to help you find them quickly for display to friends and family (this is, after all, why you took them in the first place).

You might already be familiar with tags called metadata with your music files, where the artist, album name, track number, track name, and more are all tags. They are labels used to help you identify the contents of a file.

You don’t need to be limited to a single tag per file, either. You can stack multiple tags together so your recent vacation photos in Orlando might be tagged “vacation,” “Orlando,” “Disney,” “Janell,” and “Lidia.”

Ratings are slightly different but easier to understand. Ratings in Windows 8.1 use one to five stars that indicate how significant the file is. In your music, you probably already use 4- and 5-star ratings to identify your favorite tracks; you may have been doing this for years. If you use the Like tag for music tracks in the Zune Desktop software, for example, it automatically adds a 5-star rating to each file you like.

You can view the tags and ratings for any file or files in File Explorer by clicking the Details pane button on the Ribbon under the View tab (see Figure 5-29). This opens a pane on the right side of the windows, showing all manner of information, which changes from file type to file type. Tags and Rating are always at the top of the list.

To add a tag or multiple tags to a file or a selection of files (remember you can press Ctrl+click to select multiple individual files, and click followed by Shift+click to mark a selected group), click next to Tags in the Details pane and type as many as you like, each one separated by a semicolon (;). When you have finished adding tags, click the Save button to finish.

You can add a rating or change a rating by clicking the appropriate number of stars. Click Save when you are done.

Simplify Adding Tags and Ratings with Windows Photo Gallery

It can be a laborious process adding tags and ratings to files, but the important thing to remember is that you need to do this only once. There are tools that can make the process much easier for you as well. Windows Photo Gallery , part of the Windows Essentials suite, can be downloaded for free from download.live.com. In the View tab on the Ribbon, you have the option to view files by tag (see Figure 5-30).

The View tab features a button to open the Tag and Caption Pane (the button is on the far right of the Ribbon). This pane offers a great way to simplify the addition of tags to photos and pictures because it lists all your photos by tag category, and shows all the photos that are not tagged. You can select these photos for tagging, making it much easier to know which pictures are already tagged.

When you import new photos to Windows 8.1 from your digital camera or memory card, the default import utility, the Photos app, doesn’t permit adding tags. You can add tags automatically when you import photos to your PC however by doing this from within Photo Gallery. This is a good time to do it because all the photos are probably related, and having Windows automate the process of adding tags makes things much simpler.

You can also remove and amend tags and ratings later in Windows Live Photo Gallery using simple controls. The options for this appear in the right pane when a photo or photos are selected.

You can import photos from your camera or digital memory card by clicking the Import button under the Home tab on the Ribbon.

You will first be asked to identify the media you are importing your photos from and you can then click Add Tags and type your tags (see Figure 5-31). This automatically adds the tags you enter to all your imported photos. You may want to use general tags such as “vacation,” “family,” or “Germany.” I talk more about importing photos and videos in Chapter 7.

Managing Folder Options

Folder Options offers a huge amount of control over File Explorer and the way files and folders are viewed.

The first tab in this window, General, gives you the option to open files and folders with a single-click instead of a double click. This is especially useful for people using a Windows 8.1 tablet (see Figure 5-32).

The option to show all folders in File Explorer’s Navigation Pane may be the most popular. If you aren’t a fan of the new Favorite Links pane, either you can switch it off completely in favor of the legacy folder view (see Figure 5-33) or you can combine the two. You can also set File Explorer to automatically expand the folder view of the currently viewed folder.

The View tab gives you extra control over the way files and folders are viewed and organized (see Figure 5-34). At the top of this window are buttons to Apply [the current folder view] to [all] Folders or to Reset [all] Folders to their default view. This enables you to decide the way you want your folders to look. If you want your folders tiled with items grouped by file type, for example, you can apply this quickly and easily to all the folder views on your computer.

Brief descriptions of some of the more noteworthy options follow:

• Display the full path in the title bar forces the address bar to display the full drive and folder location at all times.
• Hidden files and folders allows you to show or hide all hidden folders on your computer.
• Hide empty drives in the Computer folder is checked by default. It hides empty USB flash drives or memory card drives that you might want to copy files onto.
• Hide extensions for known file types is checked by default, but some users want to know the file extensions for all their files.
• Hide protected operating system files can be unchecked to display hidden system files that you may need to work with.
• Show drive letters shows the legacy drive assignments (C:, D:, and so on) on File Explorer views. Uncheck to remove the ability to see the drive letters.
• Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color highlights files in blue when an encryption service such as EFS is turned on. Many people like to uncheck this option.

The last tab, Search, contains options for searching files and folders. For example, by default, Windows 8.1 doesn’t search the content of compressed ZIP, CAB, or RAR files. You might want to turn on this option if you work with compressed files often (see Figure 5-35).

Searching from the Start Screen

You can now search in Windows 8.1 directly from the Start screen by simply typing. Whatever it is you are doing, as long as you are looking at the Start screen (even if you have right-clicked on a tile), you can begin typing, and the search results instantly appear. You can also search directly from the Start screen or the Windows desktop by pressing the Win+S key combination.

When you begin a search in Windows 8.1, the search results display relevant results, be they files, settings or apps, with Internet search results (provided by Bing.com) underneath (see Figure 5-36).

If you press the Enter key or the Search button to the right of the search box, then a full screen results page appears, containing many more contextualized results (see Figure 5-37). These results are displayed in columns, and underneath is a See all link that, when clicked, expands that section if more results are available.

Search is intelligent, so it does not search for the words literally as you type them. A search for Control, for example, brings up relevant Windows features, including the Device Manager, Remote Assistance, and Accessibility options.

This means that you do not have to know the exact name of the feature in Windows you are looking for. When you are searching for apps and desktop programs (for which the results appear in the Apps results), the results depend more on how the developer has described and programmed it, but generally the search facility in Windows 8.1 is excellent.

Searching in File Explorer

File Explorer contains its own context-sensitive search box. In some ways, using it is a more efficient way to search for files and documents in Windows 8.1 than using the Start screen.

The search box prioritizes the content. It might be prioritized by documents, pictures, music, video, a specific disk drive (internal or external), a network location, or something else (see Figure 5-38). In this way, it is flexible and more dynamic than the Start screen search.

When searching in File Explorer, a Search tab appears on the Ribbon. It contains tools and buttons to make search even more powerful and useful, especially for people who are less familiar with search syntax.

The Search tab on the Ribbon (see Figure 5-39) allows you to filter your search by

• The current folder and all subfolders
• Libraries, e-mail, notes, or the Internet
• When the file was last modified (opened)
• The type of file
• The file size
• File names
• Specific folders
• File tags

These options cover just about any search you will undertake in Windows 8.1. The Search tab on the Ribbon appears automatically the moment you type anything in the search box in File Explorer.

When you search from an Explorer window, you can also use Advanced Query Syntax (AQS) to narrow your searches (see Figure 5-40). I detail the full AQS in Appendix C, but some of the most useful search syntax options include Kind, Datemodified, Type, and Name. as shown in Tables 5-1 through 5-4.

Typing type: initially displays a drop-down list of all the file types on your computer (for example, DOC or PDF), as shown in Table 5-3. If, for example, you continue by typing type:image, you can filter your search by various image types or search for all image types. You also can use other file types, such as type:document, type:audio, type:video, type:presentation, and so forth.

As you begin to type a search filter in File Explorer, a drop-down list (with all the supported filter options) is displayed. Clicking the appropriate one for your search helps you find what you are looking for more quickly. If you are searching for dates, a calendar assists you.

Harnessing the Full Power of Saved Searches

Let me give you an example of how powerful I believe saved searches really are. In Figure 5-42, I searched for *.ppt? authors:mike halsey, which displays all PowerPoint files created by Mike (and optionally) Halsey.

Saving these search results creates dynamically updated folders in which you can quickly and easily find the information you need. Having a saved search for all documents relating to a project name, for example, enables you to keep track of all the documents related to the project at a single and always up-to-date location.

Saving and Sharing Your Saved Searches

Once you have created a saved search, you can create a copy of it to back it up or perhaps to share with a friend or colleague. You can do this by right-clicking the saved search in the Favorites pane in File Explorer and selecting Open Folder Location from the context menu.

You now see the saved search(es) listed and you can create copies in the same way you would with any other file on your computer. They can be backed up or shared with other computers. Note, however, that if drive assignments are different on the other computers, the search may not function correctly because searches work with drive letters and folders that all have absolute references on your computer.

Adding Folders to the Index

You can add (or remove) folders to the index by clicking the Modify button on the Indexing Options screen. It displays a folder list of all the drives on your computer. The current folder locations are checked (see Figure 5-45).

To add or remove folders or entire drives to the index, simply check or uncheck their boxes. You can expand and collapse folders by clicking the chevrons next to folder names. When you press the OK button, the index is refreshed to include or exclude the folders you have updated.

Changing the Advanced Indexing Options

Clicking the Advanced button in the Indexing Options pane brings up several additional options that you may want to consider (see Figure 5-46). Chief among these, especially if you work in a business environment, is the option to index encrypted files. By default, Windows 8.1 doesn’t index files that you have encrypted with either Microsoft’s Encrypting File System (EFS) or third-party software. This is because the key searchable contents of the files contained within the index aren’t encrypted.

For most scenarios, it is perfectly acceptable to tick this box. If you work in a governmental, financial, medical, or research and development organization, you should seek advice, although the choice will probably be made for you, and Indexing Options will not be available.

The next option in the File Settings section enables you to turn off Windows 8.1’s automatic correction feature to accommodate the different (albeit correct) spellings of words and the oddly spelled word.

In the Index location section is an option to change the default location of the index. I’d like to discuss why you might want to do this and what the benefits are. The most obvious reason to do this is to increase the speed of your hard disk or to improve the resilience of an SSD. If you have a large number of files to index, this is the only circumstance when it’s possibly worthwhile to move the index.

If you have an SSD in your computer (the number of maximum write operations is finite over the life of the disk), you may want to move the index. On modern SSDs, it shouldn’t make a difference because the overall lifespan of the disk should be more than adequate. But you may have an older SSD or perform duties that involve huge amounts of file work and modification every day.

To change the location, type the new location of the index into the empty box with its full drive assignment (e.g., D:Index) and click the Select New button.