Find and Organize Your Files

Here are our top tips and tricks for organizing and manipulating your files. Your filing system will never be in disarray again.

Yael Li-Ron

See if this sounds familiar: You save all your files to the My Document folder. All your downloads clutter your desktop. You never delete anything. You don't even remember what's on your hard drive. Those memos from your boss--that is, three bosses ago, circa 1997--are just collecting virtual dust.

If that's your idea of file management, you need to do some spring-cleaning. Urgently. Just as you file paper documents in different folders and drawers, you should also compartmentalize your hard drive. The good news is that it's all very easy.

Follow these tips, and you'll feel like Mary Poppins, effortlessly cleaning your mess with a wave of a finger and a click of a mouse. Whether you're running Windows XP, 2000, Me, or 98, we've got you covered.

I Can See Clearly Now

First things first: Before you can decide what to do with your files, you need to know what they are. In other words, is "aspen2002.doc" a Microsoft Word document about your travel plans or a travelogue? You can view each file by opening it in the application in which it was created. For example, when you double-click a file that has the extension.xls, you'll launch Microsoft Excel. But that's overkill.

A much quicker solution is to view the file in a file viewer. Because they just display files, they are small and fast. The default Windows viewers aren't always useful--for one thing, not all file formats are supported. If you're overloaded with files, you might want to try Jasc's Quick View Plus. (You can try it for free or pay $50 to keep it.) Quick View Plus lets you view the contents of all popular file formats. Just right-click a file icon within a folder or on the desktop and select Quick View Plus.

Bonus tip: If the files you're viewing are digital photos, which you've been dumping indiscriminately onto your hard drive, use Windows' own Thumbnail view. In Windows XP, 2000, and Me, thankfully, the operation is simple. In any folder, select View, Thumbnails.

If you're running Windows 98, you've more steps to take: Once you're in the folder you want to view, right-click an empty area of the folder and select Properties. Check the Enable thumbnail view box and click OK. Now select View, Thumbnails. Note: The Thumbnails option is not available when 'Enable thumbnail view' is unchecked.

A Window With a View

If you're in a folder window and want to see the contents of your entire hard drive via the handy Windows Explorer "folder tree" view, right-click the folder icon on the left side of the window's Title bar, then select Explore. If you're in Explorer mode and you want to switch to a folder view, just click the X (Close) button at the top right corner of the left-hand pane (also known as the Explorer bar), and you're back where you started.

Windows also lets you view the contents of folders as icons or lists. For file management purposes, the best view is the one known as Details. This contains information such as file size and date. You can designate certain folders to display in Details mode.

Within the folder you're organizing, in Windows XP, 2000, and Me, select Tools, Folder Options. In Windows 98, select View, Folder Options. Then click the View tab. Make sure the option Remember each folder's view settings is checked.

In Windows XP and Me, Details view can show more than the usual column headings (Name, Size, and Date). For example, a folder containing MP3s can display other relevant data such as Album Title, Artist, Duration, and so on. To choose which columns you want displayed, select View, Details, then select View, Choose Details (in XP) or View, Choose Columns (in Me). Double-click a column or detail to select or deselect it, and use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to move a selected column/detail, rearranging the order the columns will be displayed.

Unite and Conquer

Now that you know which files you want to organize, how do you move or delete them in batches? Dealing with them one by one is time-consuming; here's how to avoid such manual tasks.

Okay, so you want to delete all the Word documents from 1997 in a particular folder--say My Documents. Before you can select these docs, you need to sort through all the files inside the folder. You can do that by right-clicking any blank area in the folder. Then select View, Details and click the Modified column heading to sort the files by date (scroll right or expand the window if you don't see the column). You can click the same heading again to reverse the sort order.

At this point, you can grab all the offending files. You have three ways to do this when you're in the particular folder you want to clean up:

Option 1: Move your mouse pointer to the right of the name of the first 1997 file (anywhere but on its name or icon), hold down the mouse button, and drag the mouse pointer to draw a rectangle around the files you wish to select. As you draw your rectangle, the files will be highlighted one after the other. When you're done, press Delete on your keyboard.

Option 2: Click the first file in the group you want to get rid of. Then, hold down Shift and click the last file that matches your cut-off date (in this case, 1997). This selects the whole group. Press the Delete key.

Option 3: To use the Windows Search tool (known as Find in Windows 98) to search for files based on parameters you select, press Ctrl-F or F3 (or in Windows Me, 2000, and XP, click the Search button on the Standard Buttons toolbar). In Me, 2000, and XP, this opens a pane called an Explorer bar on the on the left side of the window; in Windows 98, the Find tool is a tabbed dialog box.

To find files saved during a particular date range, in XP, select All Files and Folders, then click When was it modified and click Specify dates. In Windows 2000 and Me, click Search Options, if necessary, to open its box, and select Date. In Windows 98, click the Date tab and click between.

To set the dates, click and enter the 'from' and 'to' dates (Windows XP) or the 'between' and 'and' dates (98, Me, and 2000), or use your mouse and the calendar-style tool that appears when you click the down arrow next to the date box. Click Search (XP), Search Now (Me and 2000), or Find Now (98). When you see the files that match your search criterion, press Ctrl-A to select all of them and press Delete.

If you want to select noncontiguous icons--that is, files that aren't next to each other--click the first one with your mouse and then hold down Ctrl while you click each additional file.

Who Needs Extensions?

The last three characters in a file name (for example,.doc,.mp3, or.jpg) can tell you what type of file you're looking at (a Word document, an audio file, and an image, respectively). However, the extension tends to add to the clutter of information in a folder.

To hide extensions of "known" files (that is, those that have extensions associated with an application), open any folder or a Windows Explorer window, select Tools (View in Windows 98), then select Folder Options, the View tab, and Hide file extensions for known file types.

Windows associates an application with a file type, according to the file's extension. For example, your images in the JPEG format may be associated with Internet Explorer. When you double-click a.jpg file, IE will open so you can view the image. But what if you want to open that file in a different program, such as Jasc's Paint Shop Pro?

To tell Windows which application to launch, hold down Shift while you right-click the file you want to open, then select Open With. In Windows 98, Me, and 2000, scroll down through the list of installed applications, check Always use this program to open these files to reset the association, and double-click the one you want to launch. In Windows XP, Open With will present a menu of installed apps; select the one you want, or select Choose Program for more choices or to reset the default association.

Print a Catalog of Files

Do you have lots of MP3 files on your hard drive? If you do, you probably save them in different sub-folders, by genre, artist, or whatever makes sense to you. You might want to print a list of those songs, for easy reference. Here's how:

1. If you're using Windows 98 or Me, open your top music folder (say, My Music).

2. Click Start, Run.

3. Type command in the field that appears and press Enter. (If you're using Windows XP or 2000, you need to find and change the default folder [named in the DOS prompt] to your top music folder: To find the short names of folders in the current folder, use the command dir /x/ad/p, and to change folders, use CD folder_name [where folder_name is the short name of the folder]. You can use 'CD..' to go back up one folder level if you go down the wrong path. Your top music folder is probably somewhere like c:\docume~1\abbreviated_username~1\mydocu~1\mymusi~1.)

4. In the MS-DOS window that opens, type 'DIR *.mp3 /S >mymusic.txt' to save the list of MP3 file names as a text file.

5. Type exit and press Enter to close the MS-DOS screen.

You can then open the file mymusic.txt in your word processor and print it.

Similarly, you can create a catalog of files in any folder, including its sub-folders. You can replace the.mp3 extension with another, perhaps.doc, to find other types of files, or leave out the '*.mp3' altogether to list every file in that folder and its subfolders. Just change the file name (instead of mymusic.txt) to something else that makes sense to you, and don't forget the.txt extension. When you are done, type exit at the DOS prompt to return to Windows.

Backups Made Easy

Everybody knows that the only way to avoid computer disaster is to back things up. Daily. Religiously. Yet very few people actually perform that life-saving operation, because it seems too daunting--and who has time anyway?

Well, here's a way to make your daily backups quick and easy. If you do this, you'll have easy access to your most important files.

Let's assume that you save all your work to the same area--multiple sub-folders within the My Documents folder, for instance. Open My Documents and follow the directions in the earlier tip, Unite and Conquer, to launch the Search tool for your version of Windows and open its date-setting area. In Windows XP, click Specify dates, and make sure both date boxes have the current date. In Windows 2000 and Me, click the In the last 1 day(s) option. In Windows 98, select during the previous 1 day(s).

Run your search, and when it's done finding the files created in the past day, select File, Save Search. In Windows 98, this saves a file named 'All Files.fnd' on your desktop; right-click that icon, select Rename, and enter an appropriate name, such as Daily.fnd. In Me, 2000, and XP, you name the file before you save it, and you can save it wherever you want.

From now on, just before you sign off for the day (or night), double-click that icon to open the Search tool with its saved search parameters (in Windows XP, you'll need to reset the dates; click the drop-down arrow on the date boxes, and if it's not after midnight, select Today at the bottom of the calendar tool). Launch your search for the files created within the past day inside the My Documents folder, insert a floppy disk, press Ctrl-A to select all the files, right-click the selection, and select Send to, 3½ Floppy (A:). If your daily work amounts to more than 1.44 megabytes' worth of files, back up to a Zip or CD-R drive.

Privacy, Please

Do you share a computer with a colleague or family member? You might have a few "sensitive" files you want to keep hidden from prying eyes. In XP and 2000, this is possible thanks to the automatic settings for different users. However, in Windows 98 and Me, you need to hide the files. There are two ways to do that:

Quick and dirty: You can rename a file so its extension doesn't reveal its true nature. If it's a.jpg image, for example, and you change the extension, the file will be invisible to Windows when it's displayed in the Thumbnail mode. (Quick View Plus, however, can view files whose extensions have been modified.)

More secure: Use Nico Mak Computing's $29 WinZip (you can also try the free evaluation first). WinZip will let you create a password-protected file from one or more files. Here's how:

1. Select the file(s) you wish to hide (for directions on selecting files in your version of Windows, see our Unite and Conquer tip).
2. Right-click the selection and select Add to Zip.
3. In WinZip, click the Password button. Create a password and type it twice, as prompted.
4. Click the Add to Archive field, press the End button on your keyboard, and type a name for the new zipped file.
5. Click Add and close WinZip. A new Zip file has been added to the folder.
6. Remember, the files you want to hide are still selected. Press Delete to remove them from the folder.
7. Right-click the.zip file and select Create self-extractor (.EXE).
8. Follow WinZip's prompts to test the new archive, and close when you're done.
9. The.zip file is still selected--and an.exe with the same name is listed in the same folder. Press Delete to remove the selected.zip file.