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Keep files safe Use Windows’ folders to make finding your files easier. If you use a word processor, or a spreadsheet – or just about any other kind of program in which you create documents or files – the files you create will need to be saved onto your hard disk. Most programs offer you a “default” folder in which to save your work, but it’s not always obvious just where that folder is on your hard disk, and sometimes, when you want to open up a piece of work to do some more work on it, you can’t always find it. Every version of Windows since 95 offers a simple solution to the problem. They all create folders called “My Documents”, in which you can store all your files. (By the same token, they also create a folder called “Program Files” in which all your programs should be stored. In theory, every program for Windows that you buy should use the “Program Files” folder to install itself into, but many don’t – we’ll look at that another time). The purpose of the “My Documents” folder is pretty much self explanatory. It’s meant to be the repository of all the files you create. One drawback of just using “My Documents” to hold all you work is that you can end up with lots and lots of files in there, and, even with the Windows icon system, it might not always be obvious what kind of file is what. So, why not create some folders in the My Documents folder, with names that mean something to you? Different strokes For instance, in my own My Documents folder, I’ve got folders for different kinds of work. There’s a folder called “AOL” for every piece of correspondence I have with AOL. There’s another one called “PPC”, in which I store all the articles I’ve written for this magazine. You may want to create a folder called “Letters”, one called “Car” – the list is endless. All that matters is that you understand what each folder is for. Then, when you come to save a piece of work, you simply click on “My Documents” then the folder that corresponds to the piece of work you’re saving, and then, most importantly, give the file a good name. Long and short of it Windows allows you to use what are called “long file names”, which simply means that you can use something a little more descriptive than the old “8.3” standard allowed. For instance, if you’d written a document in Word that was all about Dinosaurs for a piece of homework in your History class, you might call the document “Dinosaur homework for history” and Word would put in the file extension “.doc” for you. Under the 8.3 system, you’d have used, say, “dinowork.doc”, which would make subsequent documents on similar topics somewhat less easy to name You might have created a “Homework” folder, of course, in which you had created a further folder called “History” in which case, you could simply call the file “Dinosaurs”, and save it into the “My Documents->Homework->History” folder – either way, you can easily find what you’re looking for if you need to edit the file again. At the end of the day, if you create descriptive folders in the “My Documents” folder, you will find it much easier to find files that you have created – because they’ll be stored in places that you can remember. The only thing to watch out for is programs that do not automatically start the save process in the “My Documents” folder. If you have such a program, then you will have to find your way to it yourself – just remember that “My Documents” is located on your C: drive. My tip: - create a shortcut to “My Documents” on your desktop if one does not already exist (as it does since Windows Me)! Floppies “Ah – but I need the document on a floppy to take into school” I hear you cry! Well, yes, that’s easy to sort. Whatever else you do, don’t do the initial save to a floppy disk – or to a CD, either, for that matter. · Do the initial save to Hard Disk, as I’ve outlined above. · Only when you’re finished editing the document, and have done the final save, should you even think about getting the file onto floppy. · What you then do is open up “My Documents” and whichever folder in there that you’ve saved your document to. · Find the file, right click on it and select “Send To” and then “3½ Floppy(A:)”. That will send the document to the floppy disk in your A: drive. What’s more, it does it without affecting the original document on your hard disk, and without upsetting the “recent files” settings for the program you created it in.
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