The first step to understanding how best to save, browse to, and organize data is to learn the differences among files, folders, and subfolders, and what types of folders Windows 8.1 already includes. With that knowledge, you can save data better and use File Explorer more effectively to locate and manage your data in the future.

The main differences among files, folders, and subfolders are as follows:

Windows 8.1 offers the following folders from File Explorer when This PC is selected; no files are stored there by default when you install Windows 8.1:

In this exercise, you’ll explore the folders already on your own computer by using File Explorer. What you see when you click a folder in the Navigation pane (the left pane in the File Explorer window) might include data you’ve already acquired, or you might see only the practice files that you’ve copied here while working through this book.

There are other options available in the Navigation pane of File Explorer beyond what’s available from This PC. Microsoft SkyDrive is one of them. You’ll learn about SkyDrive in Chapter 6 but we’ll briefly introduce it here. You’ll also see Homegroup and related options if you’ve joined a homegroup (see Chapter 13) and Network and resulting options if you have a network already configured (see Chapter 11). Because you might not yet have either, we’ll skip those for now.

Anyone who logs on to a Windows 8–based computer with a Microsoft account has the ability to save files to SkyDrive. SkyDrive is a folder in the Navigation pane of File Explorer that offers a place to save your files on the Internet. You’ll get 7 GB of free space there, and you can use that space to back up important files or to make files accessible from any computer you can log on to that can access the Internet. On Windows 8–based computers, you can access the files you store there from the SkyDrive app; from other computers you can visit https://skydrive.live.com/ and log on to access your files.

To get a glimpse of what SkyDrive offers, in the Navigation pane, click SkyDrive to see what appears in the Content pane. What you see will depend on whether you’ve set up and/or used SkyDrive, and what configuration changes, if any, you’ve performed.

Now, while reading the rest of this chapter, think about the things you might want to save to SkyDrive. As an example, if you work on specific files from various computers, you might want to save those files to SkyDrive so that you can always access the latest version. You might want to let Windows 8.1 back up all of the photos you take with your camera here, too. You might want to save to SkyDrive by default. You can configure these options for SkyDrive from PC Settings as well as others. For now though, simply take notice that you can save files there, and consider doing so. Here are SkyDrive options from PC Settings.

Regarding libraries

Libraries were a prevalent part of Windows 7 and Windows 8. Libraries were available in the Navigation pane of File Explorer and offered access to both the personal and public folders related to the library selected. As an example, the Documents Library offered easy access to what was in both the (My) Documents folder and the Public Documents folder. You could separate the data if you wanted to, but it was not separated by default. You could also add other folders to libraries to include them. However, libraries were mostly misunderstood by users and rarely used effectively.

Libraries are still available in Windows 8.1, but they are different now. A library, by default, only offers access to the related personal folder. So, the Documents library only offers access to what is in the Documents folder (and no longer offers access to what’s also in the Public Documents folder). This is true of the other libraries (Music, Pictures, Videos).

If you still want to show a Libraries section in the Navigation pane, you can do so on the View tab, under the Navigation pane option. Just select Show libraries so that a check mark appears by it. The updated default libraries will then reappear in the Navigation pane. For more information on this, refer to the section Customizing File Explorer by using the View tab later in this chapter.

Another way to enable and incorporate libraries is to create a new folder (perhaps on the desktop) and name it (we’ll create a folder named Travel), right-click that folder and then, on the shortcut menu that appears, click Include In Library. Then, click Create New Library. After you do this, the traditional libraries will appear in the Navigation pane, as will your new library. You can continue to expand on this structure as desired.

If you upgraded to Windows 8.1 from Windows 7, you will still see the old format for libraries, meaning you’ll have access to both the personal and public folders if you opt to show Libraries in the Navigation pane. However, if you upgraded from Windows 8, or if you installed Windows 8.1 clean, you won’t.

You can open and view hundreds of kinds of files on your Windows 8–based computer. The most common sorts of files are documents, spreadsheets, presentations, music, pictures, videos, and executable files. You might occasionally work with recorded TV or specialized files from third-party apps, but for the most part, the types of files you encounter will be common ones.

You save each of these files as a specific file type. You choose the file type during the save process. (If you copy a file from another source, it already has a file type.) For example, when you save a document you’ve created by using Microsoft Word, you name the file, choose a place to save it, and select the desired file type from a list. The file type gives the file a specific extension, generally three or four letters that appear at the end of the file name (but don’t necessarily appear in the list of options). The name, place, and file type you select defines the file so that Windows 8.1 can distinguish it from other files, locate it, and offer it for viewing.

To save files effectively, you need to know a little about the choices available in apps you’ll use to create them. The list that follows shows the types of files you’ll encounter most often and their file name extensions. You have the option to select a file type when you save a file. The illustration shows the options when saving a picture file in Paint.

By default, file extensions are not shown in the lists you’ll peruse while searching for a file to open using File Explorer. This is true of most other methods, as well, such as opening a file from the File menu of an app like Paint or WordPad. If you are interested in knowing the file type, you can do this by viewing the file’s Properties page. The Properties page for any file offers its file extension and other information. You can open the Properties page by right-clicking the file and then, on the shortcut menu that appears choosing Properties. The Properties dialog box for any file also offers the name of the app with which the file is configured to open, the option to open the folder that contains the file, and other data and options.

In this exercise you’ll open the Properties page for a file on your own computer and learn its file type.

You acquire files in many ways. You might obtain picture files from a webpage or from an email. You can copy photos from a digital camera or memory card that you own. You can copy documents from a flash drive, external drive, or corporate server. Of course, you also create your own files by using word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation apps, to name a few. There are thousands of ways to acquire data.

When you get or create data, you must save it. When you save a file, you name the file, choose a place to save it, and select a file type. You will probably want to name the files descriptively, but even if you don’t (or you forget to) you can still sort files by various metadata—which is the data that describes data—that is added to them automatically, such as the date a file was created, among other things. Additionally, at least at first, you should strive to save data files in their respective default folders, too. Save personal documents to the Documents folder, personal pictures the Pictures folder, personal audio files to the Music folder, and so on. Alternatively, you could save your files to the related folder on SkyDrive. All of these options for saving are available from File Explorer.

Similarly, you should opt to save data that you’d like to share with others or access from networked devices (such as media centers) to their Public folder counterparts. For instance, you might consider saving your music files to the Public Music folder, your vacation videos to the Public Videos folder, and your favorite pictures to the Public Pictures folder, because when you do, you make those files easily accessible from any device on your network. You have to choose this option specifically, though; no data is saved to the Public folders by default. (It is possible to create a homegroup for sharing data, as is detailed in Chapter 13.)

In this exercise, you’ll create a file in WordPad, save it to your personal Documents folder, and then to the Public Documents folder.

It is important to understand that the options you see in the Save As Type list depend on the app you’re using to save the file. In Notepad, if you click the arrow to open the list, you can see that you have only one option, Text Documents (*.txt). WordPad offers more, including but not limited to Open Document Text and Office Open XML Document. As you saw earlier, Paint offers completely different options, including .jpg, .bmp, and .gif. You’ll see additional options as you work with different software apps.

You can acquire data by creating it, such as you did in the previous exercise by using WordPad. In this next exercise, though, instead of creating a document file, you’ll acquire a different type of data: picture files. As with other types of data, you’ll want to save the pictures you acquire to the appropriate folder. That folder might be the Pictures folder on SkyDrive, the Pictures folder from This PC, or the Public Pictures folder, available from the root drive, under Users and Public. When you use File Explorer to copy photos, you can be sure you know exactly where they are saved. (Some apps save by default in a folder that you might not prefer, for example.)

To work through the following exercise, you’ll need to connect a camera, camera card, or flash drive that contains pictures. You might also have a backup drive with pictures. If you don’t have this at hand, you can return here when you do. This exercise lets you see what might happen by default, and then you use File Explorer to copy the photos to the Pictures folder manually.

In this exercise, you’ll access pictures from a digital camera, memory card, or USB flash drive by using File Explorer and copy those photos to the Pictures folder on your computer.

File Explorer uses a graphical user interface feature called the ribbon that is becoming the defacto standard for navigation. The ribbon runs across the top of the window and is made up of several tabs. You’ve already used the ribbon to copy files and have probably noted that it presents a lot of elements. You click any tab to access the groups of related options and tools. Each time you click a new tab, the ribbon displays a different group of tools, depending on which tab you clicked. The names of the tabs are mostly intuitive and share attributes with other ribbon-enabled windows and apps.

The ribbon is a highly contextual interface. The tabs and options on the ribbon change depending on what you have selected in the Navigation pane. For example, if you click SkyDrive in the Navigation pane, you see a specific set of tabs on the ribbon that includes File, Home, Share, and View. You can see what’s on each tab by clicking it. If you click a specific item in a folder, perhaps a photo, the tabs change again. In the case of a selected photo, a new tab appears (Picture Tools Manage). If you select a video file, you will see File, Home, Share, View, and Video Tools (Play).

To understand how to use the ribbon, you must know which tabs will appear most often and what is available under these tabs. When working with folders, the following are the most common tabs you’ll encounter:

In this exercise, you’ll explore various tabs on the File Explorer ribbon and use the ribbon to delete the My WordPad Document file you created earlier in this chapter. Later, you’ll learn how to use more of the commands you see on these tabs.

To summarize, the ribbon offers the tools you need to perform tasks when working with files, folders, and subfolders, and the tabs are named so that you can easily determine what should be available on them. For instance, if you want to share a file by printing it, sending it by email, burning it to a CD, or even faxing it, the Share tab offers this functionality. If you want to change how you view files in File Explorer or if you’d like to sort your files, group them, or hide or view specific parts of File Explorer, the View tab offers this functionality. Don’t worry if this is all new to you; it’s pretty intuitive, and you’ll catch on quickly.

There are many ways to organize your files and folders beyond saving them in the appropriate folders and with recognizable names. One way to organize your files for the long term is to create subfolders within the existing default folders and move data into those subfolders. By using subfolders, you can easily expand the existing file system. This makes navigating your data more intuitive when using File Explorer. Windows 8.1 makes it easy to create a subfolder, and you’ll learn how to do it in the next exercise.

Either before or after you create subfolders and begin to move data into them, you can give those folders more recognizable names than they have now. Names such as Tax Summary 2013, Jennifer’s Wedding, or My Las Vegas Vacation 2011 are certainly understandable and better than something less descriptive (such as Taxes, Pictures, or Vacation). You can delete files you no longer need, too. Finally, if you decide to archive data that you no longer want to store on your computer, you can burn those files to a CD or DVD.

In this exercise, you’ll create a subfolder within the Pictures folder.

After you create a subfolder, it’s easy to move data into it. You can just drag files from the window to the newly created folder. This works great if the new folder and the data you want to move into it are both in the same window. However, if dragging isn’t so straightforward, you can use the Move To command on the Home tab of the ribbon.

In this exercise, you’ll move two files at one time from one folder to another by using the Move To command in File Explorer.

When you import pictures from a digital camera by using any of the available built-in tools, your camera software, or a photo-editing app, those imported pictures are given names. Every file must have its own name. The names given aren’t very descriptive, though. The file names applied might be a cryptic form of the date on which the photos were imported, or they might be partial names created by using tags you applied during the process, but usually they are not the names you’d apply to them, given the opportunity.

Other types of files are also often named inappropriately, generally because you’re in a hurry to save them. File names such as Dad, Summary, Presentation, Taxes, and so on don’t give much information about their contents. If you find yourself opening the file to figure out what it is, the name is not descriptive enough.

In this exercise, you’ll rename a file by using the Rename command in File Explorer.

Now that you have some experience with File Explorer, the ribbon, and working with files, you can use that knowledge to explore other tools that are available on the ribbon and to use those tools with less guidance. For instance, you can likely figure out how to burn a file to a CD or DVD because Burn To Disc is a command on the Share tab, provided your computer or laptop offers the required drive. Likewise, you can deduce how to print the Sheep.jpg photo by using the Print command that’s located on that same tab. In both instances, you select the desired file, click the desired command, and follow any instructions provided; for instance, you might have to insert a disc or put paper in the printer.

Some commands are less intuitive than, for example, Print. The Zip command is one of those. When you zip a file (or files), you compress it. When you compress a group of files or a single large file, it takes up less space on your hard disk. People often zip large files or groups of files before they send them as attachments to email messages to reduce the amount of time it will take the files to arrive at their destination. In the past, people zipped files because of a lack of hard disk space. (The practice files you downloaded for use with this book were zipped.)

Fax is another intuitive but odd command. It’s a little different from the others because you need access to a fax server or telephone line to actually send a fax, and most home users don’t have that access. If you already have something in place with which you can send faxes from your computer, though, the process is intuitive. If you’d like to be able to send faxes from your computer, you’ll have to perform the setup tasks that appear when you click the Fax command.

There are some tools you can now explore on your own from the Share tab. (Remember that not all options appear for all data.)

On the View tab in File Explorer, you can change how the window displays on the screen. You can hide or show the Navigation pane, change how the files appear (for example, as a detailed list or as icons), and hide files and folders you don’t use very often. You can show panes that do not currently appear, including the Preview pane and the Details pane. You can also group files in various ways, show file name extensions, and more. The best way to learn your way around these options is to show and hide these panes, show and hide files, and change how the files and folders appear in the File Explorer window.

Here are the options you can safely explore on the View tab.

You know how to share files by using File Explorer and how to change the way you view files there. As you acquire more data, however, it will become increasingly difficult to sift through it to find what you want. One way to deal with large amounts of data is to customize what’s shown in a File Explorer window by searching for the files you want. When you do this, only the files that match criteria you set appear in the window. This is a good way to cull information when you’ve stored a lot of data.

In this exercise, you’ll search for a specific file in File Explorer.

You learned earlier in this chapter how to delete a file (or other item) in File Explorer; you just select the item and then, on the Home tab of the ribbon, click Delete. You can select multiple items by holding down Shift or Ctrl. You might know other ways to delete a file, including right-clicking the item and then choosing Delete from the resulting contextual menu or selecting the item and pressing the Delete key. However you do it, files and folders you delete are sent to the Recycle Bin and are removed from their current positions in the folder. The Recycle Bin holds deleted files and data until you manually empty it.

In this last exercise, you’ll restore a file by using the Recycle Bin.

There are a few other things you can do while in the Recycle Bin, including emptying it. You can also restore every item that’s in there. You should make it a habit to empty the Recycle Bin two or three times a year. You do this on the Manage tab. To access this screen, on the desktop, double-click the Recycle Bin. (Note that when you empty the Recycle Bin, you will no longer be able to restore anything previously in it.)

The Recycle Bin has other tabs to explore, too. When you explore them, you’ll find familiar tools on each. For instance, on the Recycle Bin Home tab, you can delete specific files permanently, move files somewhere else, and even view the properties for a file. Likewise, on the Share tab, you can send email and burn files to a disc. On the View tab, you can change how items in the Recycle Bin appear in the window.