You can learn a lot and gain more understanding about the stuff in your computer by looking at the files and folders from a more advanced point of view.

To really look at your computer, change how the information is displayed. Change Windows point of view:

Step 1:

• Open My computer
• Click on the icon called C (this is your computer’s main hard drive and it may also have a name)
• Locate and find any folder
• Click on the Folder to open it.
• Make sure you can see the window at full screen size, rather than a small window within your screen. This is called maximizing the size of the window

Step 2:

• Click on View
• Click on Details

Step 3:

• Click on View a second time. (Yes a second time)
• Click on Options or Folder Options
• Click on the Tab marked VIEW within these options
• Click on Show all Files
• Click off either: Hide MS-DOS file extensions for files that are registered or Hide file extensions for known file types

You have now taken windows to a new level and changed its point of view. You can now see real information about the files and folders in your computer.

Change this information which does not tell you very much....

To this information with dates, times, sizes, file types and real names:

Step 4:

You should now see a listing of folders rather than large or small icons. This listing should contain columns for

• Name
• Size
• Type
• Modified

The column for size maybe blank in many cases. You will only see sizes for actual files, not for folders.

Click on any folder to view the contents of that folder. Click again if you have folders within folders. The column for size should indicate actual numbers for each file within a folder.

You may have to repeat Step 2 again each time you open another folder within  window. Step 1 should remain the same for all subsequent windows.

Just as your computer is organized into folders and files, the files themselves have another level of organization. The full name of the file can tell you a lot about its purpose.

Files have descriptive names followed by a period, followed by another 3 characters. These following 3 characters are called the file name extension. The extension is a powerful tool designed to organize and manage files. These file extensions are used by the computer to identify different purposes for different files.

For example:

• File extensions of doc are usually MS Word documents
• File extensions of com or exe are usually program files
• File extensions of sys are system files
• File extensions of tmp or ~mp designate temporary files.

Don’t worry about memorizing or fully understanding everything about file names at this time. Just remember to change Windows point of view and to look for the 3 letter extension of a file name.

And finally, you can arrange the files in order by name, date, type or size:

• Click on View
• Arrange icons
  • by name
  • by type
  • by size
  • by date