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- Hour 6 -

Explore the Windows 95 System

Windows 95 includes a comprehensive program that you might use every time you turn on your computer. The Windows 95 Explorer graphically displays your entire computer system in a hierarchical tree structure. With Explorer, you have access to everything inside your computer (and outside if you are networked). Even though the My Computer window also displays all the devices in your computer, Explorer can do so inside a single window whereas you must open separate windows for each device to see the contents of devices within the My Computer window. The advantage of the single window is that you have much more freedom to manage files, folders, icons, and even electronic mail using a single Explorer window.

This hour demonstrates the Windows 95 Explorer and shows you its ins and outs. You have already mastered some of Explorer's commands in the previous hour because Explorer uses some of the same copy and move techniques that Open dialog boxes use. Explorer goes far beyond the capabilities of dialog boxes, however, by letting you manipulate all of your computer's software and hardware. Once you've learned about Explorer, the hour wraps up by showing you some time- and disk-saving features of Windows 95.

The highlights of this hour include:

Hello, Windows 95 Explorer!

You'll find the Windows Explorer program listed on the Start menu's second cascaded menu. Click the Start button now to display the Start menu. Select Programs, and then select Windows Explorer. The Explorer window will open up to look like the one shown in Figure 6.1. Figure 6.1 shows the Explorer screen fully maximized, but you can run Explorer in a smaller window if you want something else to appear on your screen as well.

Figure 6.1. Explorer's opening window.

JUST A MINUTE: Your Explorer screen may look slightly different depending on your Windows 95 configuration. You'll see how to change your view of Explorer in the next task.

TIME SAVER: Quickly start Explorer by right-clicking over the Start menu and selecting Explore from the pop-up menu that appears.

The left side of the Explorer screen contains a hierarchical overview of your computer system. Click the vertical scroll bar on the left window, if there is one, to see the rest of the hierarchical system tree.

JUST A MINUTE: If a folder icon appears with a plus sign to the left of it, as the Windows folder does, that folder contains additional folders. Folder icons without the plus sign contain only documents (as you learned in Hour 5, "Cruise with Documents and Windows," a Windows 95 document might be any kind of file, including programs that you can run), but not additional folders. When you open a folder and display its contents, the plus sign changes to a minus sign, as you'll see in the first task.

The right window contains a pictorial overview of the contents of whichever device or folder that you select in the left window. The overview might contain large or small icons depending on the view you click. As you select different items in the left window, the right window changes to reflect your changes. Task 6.1 guides you through an initial exploration of Explorer.

3.1 Step Up Did you ever use the full capabilities of the Windows 3.1 Program Manager and File Manager? Rarely do people, even experts, know or use all the capabilities in those programs. The two utility programs are simply too cumbersome to use all of their power.

The document architecture of Windows 95 goes a long way toward simplifying the things you could have done, but often did not do, in Program Manager. The Windows 95 Explorer makes working with the Windows 3.1 File Manager seem like working with a rock tablet and chisel. The Explorer is not just a disk and file manager but a complete system manager. Instead of getting a single view of a single disk, Explorer continuously maps out your entire computer system so you can easily work with multiple hardware devices. The Windows 95 Explorer is not even limited to directories and files, but displays folders, including your networked folders, as well as online Microsoft Network and Internet services.

Task 6.1: Changing Explorer's View

Step 1: Description
This task teaches you how to adjust Explorer's display to see the Explorer screen in different ways. As you use Explorer, you may change the display to offer the best option for the information you're looking for at the time.

This task assumes that you've already started Explorer as requested in the previous section.

TIME SAVER: There are several ways to do the very same things in Windows 95. You can start Explorer by right-clicking over the My Computer icon.

Step 2: Action

1. Scroll the left window pane until you see the icon for drive C in the window.

2. If you see a plus sign next to your C: icon in the left window (you may have to scroll the window's scroll bar to see the C: icon), click the plus sign to display the contents of drive C. The plus becomes a minus sign, and the left window opens the C: icon showing the list of folders and documents on drive C. Click the drive's minus sign again to close the window. Click once more to turn the plus to a minus and watch the right window. As you change between these two views of drive C (detailed and overview), watch the right window change.

JUST A MINUTE: Notice that the right window does not change as you click the C: icon in the left window. The reason is that the right window always displays the contents of whatever you highlight in the left window. Whether or not the C: icon is open (with a minus sign) or closed (with a plus sign), the C: icon is highlighted. The right window displays that selected drive C's highest level folders and documents. If you were to click on one of those documents on drive C, the right window would then update to show the contents of that folder (don't click on a folder just yet).
3. Click on the highest level in the left window labeled Desktop, and Windows 95 displays the contents of your desktop in the right window. See Figure 6.2.


Figure 6.2. You can view the desktop contents in the Explorer.


4. Click on the C: icon to display the contents of drive C. Depending on the contents and size of your drive C, the right window may contain a few or several document files.

5. Press Alt+V to open the View menu on the menu bar. Select Toolbar to display the toolbar of icons that appears right below the menu bar.

CAUTION:: Your toolbar may already be on your Explorer screen. If so, selecting View | Toolbar will make the toolbar go away. Select View | Toolbar until you see the toolbar. A checkmark will appear next to Toolbar on the View menu.
The dropdown listbox at the left of the toolbar gives you a third access tool for swapping between devices, folders, and files on your computer. If you ever detail too much information than will fit in the left window, the dropdown listbox keeps the list smaller and more manageable, always giving you more of a high-level overview of your computer system.
Figure 6.3 shows the toolbar with its icons labeled. The toolbar offers push-button access to many commands that are on the Explorer menus.


Figure 6.3. The toolbar makes common tasks easier.


6. Display the View menu once again. The Large Icons window (the default display
view) consumes most of the right window. Therefore, select View | Small Icons to gather more room in the right window. The View | Small Icons command shrinks the size of the icons to show more items at once in the right window.

7. Select View | List. Windows 95 Explorer retains the small icon sizes and displays the items by type of item (folders first and then documents).

8. Select View | Details. Windows 95 Explorer displays the items in a detailed format that describes the name, type, and modified date of each item as shown in Fig-ure 6.4.


Figure 6.4. Sometimes you want more detail about the Explorer items.


As with the Open dialog box detailed lists, you can adjust the column widths of the three detailed columns in the right window by dragging the column title dividers with the mouse.
Click over Name, the title of the first detailed column in the right window. Watch the window's contents change as you then click over Type. Explorer sorts the display to appear in alphabetical order by type. Click the Modified column, and Explorer displays the items in reverse date order from most recent to the oldest. If you click any column twice in a row, Windows 95 sorts the column in reverse order.

9. If you want to see more of one of Explorer's windows, you can drag the vertical dividing line that falls between the two windows to the left or right. For example, if you want the left window to be smaller to make room for more large icons, drag the center column to the left and release the mouse when the left window is as small as you need it to be. (Remember that the mouse cursor changes shape when you place it at the proper position on the dividing column.)
Explorer will not update the display every time you resize a window. Therefore, if you enlarge the right window, Explorer does not automatically rearrange the right window's icons to fill up the newly enlarged space. The View | Refresh command will adjust the icons to fill the space evenly. Therefore, you'll almost always want to select View | Refresh after modifying Explorer's window sizes. Figure 6.5 shows an Explorer screen with a small left window.


Figure 6.5. Adjust the Explorer window sizes if you need more room.

JUST A MINUTE: If you make the left or right window too small (such as this figure's left window is), Windows 95 adds a horizontal scroll bar to the small window so you can scroll its contents back and forth to see what's highlighted or to select another item.
10. The Explorer environment is always updating itself to reflect your current actions. Therefore, the right-click menu commands change depending on whether you select a text document, folder, sound document, graphic document, disk drive, or network drive. Click over a folder and click the right mouse button to see the menu that appears. Now, click the right mouse button over a document file, and you'll see a slightly different menu. The actions you might want to perform on a document are often different from the actions you might want to perform on a folder, and the menu reflects those differences. The right-click's pop-up menus are context-sensitive, so they contain only the options you can use at the time.

JUST A MINUTE: When viewing your system and its folders inside Explorer, all of the techniques that you learned in the previous hour's discussion on Open dialog boxes apply for Explorer as well. For example, you can open a folder by double-clicking it, and then return to the previous (parent) folder by clicking the Up One Level icon on the Explorer's taskbar.
11. Many users will use Explorer to copy files to and from diskette drives and other kinds of drives such as networked drives. In the previous hour, you learned how to copy and move individual files, and as you see here, the same techniques apply inside Explorer.
Now that you're accustomed to copying and moving individual files, Explorer makes it easy to copy and move multiple files at once. Often, you want to put one or more files on a diskette to take to your home computer for weekend overtime (sure, you want to do that a lot!).

To select more than one document at a time, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking over each document that you want to select. You can even select folders as well as documents. When you select a folder and other document files to copy to a disk, for example, Windows 95 copies all of the document files within the folder, as well as the other document files you've selected, to the disk. Figure 6.6 shows an Explorer screen with several document files and a folder selected. The File | Send To command is about to send those files to the diskette in drive A.


Figure 6.6. Select multiple documents and folders if you need to copy several at a time.

TIME SAVER: If you want to select all but one or two documents and folders inside a window, first Ctrl-click on the one or two that you don't want to select (which selects those) and choose Edit | Invert Selection to reverse the selection. All the items that were not selected will now be selected, and the one or two that were selected are not selected anymore.


Step 3: Review
The Explorer windows give you both high-level and detailed overviews of your computer system and the computer's files. Explorer offers two windows for two different views: A computer-level view and a folder view, if you need one. Clicking on folder icons inside either window opens those folders and gives you a view of more documents and folders deeper within your computer system.

Once you display documents and folders, you are free to copy, move, delete, and rename those items as you learned to do in the previous hour inside the Open dialog boxes.

CAUTION:: You cannot select parts of a document to copy or move inside Explorer as you could do with Open dialog boxes. Remember that once you open a document using a program, such as a spreadsheet, you see the contents of that document. The text selection commands you learned in the previous hour selected text only from documents you had already opened; you cannot do that inside Explorer.

3.1 Step Up The File Manager's windows displayed only a single disk drive at a time. Therefore, when you wanted to copy or move a file from one directory on one disk to another directory on a different disk, you had to open two windows using the File Manager non-intuitive menu. Then you had to select the two directories on the two disks, and then issue the command to copy or move.

The strength of Explorer is that your entire computer system appears in the left window at all times. When you want to drag a document or folder to a different directory on a completely different drive (or even to another computer on the network if you are connected to a network), the target disk drive always appears in the left window. As long as you've clicked the disk drive's plus sign to display that disk's directories, you can drop a file into that directory from elsewhere in the system.

The Explorer Options

Explorer supports various display options for the items inside its windows. As you'll recall from previous hours, Windows 95 supports the use of filename extensions. The View | Options command displays tabbed dialog boxes that let you control the items in the Explorer display.

3.1 Step Up Windows 95 often uses filename extensions as a means of registering file types. Although two files of different types can have the same extension, the extension is often a clue as to the purpose of the file.

Task 6.2: Changing Explorer's Options

Step 1: Description
Different users require different output from the Explorer program. There are types of documents that you simply don't need to display during normal work inside Explorer. The system files are good examples of files that the typical user does not need to see.

In addition, the actual location of the file, known as the path, does not always match the sys-tem of embedded folders. (See Hour 4, "Take Windows 95 to Task," for more information on pathnames.) In other words, a document may be located inside two embedded folders shown with the Explorer display, but the actual file might be embedded three levels deep on your hard disk. The system of folders--but not always--matches the system of directories on your disk. If you need to know exactly where folders and documents are located on your disk drive, you can request that Explorer display the full pathname of those folders and documents.

Step 2: Action

1. Select the View | Options command to display the Options tabbed dialog box shown in Figure 6.7.


Figure 6.7. The Options dialog box determines the appearance of Explorer.


2. You can click either the Show all files option or the Hide files of these types option to determine whether you want to see all types of documents in the Explorer windows. The types shown in the scrolling listbox are generally system-related files used internally by Windows 95 to keep track of system resources and inter-program communications.

3. If you click Display the full MS-DOS path in the title bar, Explorer displays a full pathname of selected documents in the title bar (the area above the right window's display that describes what you are viewing) every time you select one of the items in the left window.

4. The next option is Hide MS-DOS file extensions for file types that are registered. Windows 95 comes installed with several types of files already registered, and you may never need to register additional types. Registered files are files that Windows 95 recognizes by their filename extensions.

When you register a file type (as described in the next task), you tell Windows 95 the program for all files with that extension to associate to. Once registered, when you double-click that file's icon, Windows 95 starts the program you've associated with that file. For example, when you double-click a file with a .CDA extension, Windows 95 starts the CD Player application because CD Player is the application associated to all files that end in the .CDA extension.

TIME SAVER: If you are familiar with MS-DOS and filenames, you might feel more comfortable if you display the file extensions on the Explorer screen documents. Hiding the extensions reduces clutter in the right window, but with the extension, you can determine the exact name of the file when you need the exact name.

CAUTION:: If you hide filename extensions in Explorer, Windows 95 hides those extensions in almost every other file listing. For example, if you hide Explorer's extension display, you will no longer see extensions in WordPad's Open dialog boxes. You won't even see them in applications that you purchase in addition to Windows 95 applications, such as Microsoft Excel.
5. Clicking the Include description bar for right and left panes turns on or off the display of the title bar. Windows 95 is inconsistent here; in the middle of the dialog box Windows 95 calls the title bar a title bar, and Windows 95 calls the title bar a description bar here. Nevertheless, getting rid of the title bar's display gives you additional room in the Explorer windows but removes the title bar's description for selected items.


Step 3: Review
If you don't like the way Explorer displays information, you can probably change the display. Explorer's options let you determine how documents appear, how large their windows are, and whether or not filename extensions should appear.

Task 6.3: Registering File Types

Step 1: Description
As the previous hour explained, Windows 95 makes the document, rather than the program, the focus of everything you do. When you want to edit a graphic image, you ought to be able to click on that image instead of starting a graphics program, and then loading the image from there. By registering file types, and the file's extension, you teach Windows 95 how to work with all files of that extension.

Suppose that someone designs a new graphics format after you begin using Windows 95. The format increases the computer's graphic compression ability and lets you store huge graphics files in a small amount of space. Suppose these compressed graphic files have an extension of .CPR and the program that displays those graphics is called Compress Graphics. You can associate the .CPR filename extension to the Compress Graphics program name so that when you click on any file whose extension is .CPR, even if that extension is not showing in the Explorer window, Windows 95 knows to start the Compress Graphics program and automatically loads the image you double-clicked.

This task shows you how to view and change any associations that currently reside on your system.

CAUTION:: You are probably better off not changing any file associations at this time. The only reason to change a current association is if you install a program you like that works with a certain type of file better than one already registered for that type. Most Windows 95 installation programs automatically register their file types when you install the programs. Therefore, this task is more informative than active so you can better understand the purpose of file associations.


Step 2: Action

1. Select the View | Options tabbed dialog box again if you don't have the dialog still showing from the previous task.

2. Click the tab marked File Types. You'll see the File Types dialog box shown in Figure 6.8.


Figure 6.8. The File Types dialog box where you register file types.

3. Click the item in the scrollable listbox labeled CD Audio Track. In the File type details portion of the dialog box you'll see that the extension associated with this file type name is .CDA and that CDPLAYER is the name of the program that automatically starts when you double-click any file with this .CDA extension. The icon you see also serves to identify the file type.

JUST A MINUTE: When double-clicking a file to start that file's associated program, the file's extension does not have to show on the screen. Remember that many users hide the display of filename extensions when using Windows 95.
4. Click the Edit command button to see more information on .CDA file types. You'll see an additional dialog box, called the Edit File Type dialog box, appear. Figure 6.9 shows the Edit File Type dialog box.

Figure 6.9. The Edit File Type dialog box controls the details of file associations.

Here is where you select or change icons associated with registered file types. Every .CDA file appearing in Explorer (or in the Open dialog box displays) will have the same icon. You could select a different icon if you want (don't do so now). The Description of type prompt displays a description of the file type for reference purposes. The Actions describe the first thing the program must do. Given the screen shown in Figure 6.9 (your screen should not be too different), the .CDA files have an icon that contains a compact disc over a document, the description of this file type is CD Audio track, and the first thing the CDPLAYER program will do automatically, upon loading itself after you double-click a .CDA file, is execute the Play command. This plays the .CDA song file you've selected.
Each application has its own way of working with files. For example, a word processor would more than likely open a file so you could edit the file, but a song file, such as one stored on disk as a copy of a CD audio track, is usually played and not edited.

5. Click the Edit command button to see the lowest-level of detail available for file type associations. You'll see the Editing action dialog box shown in Figure 6.10 appear.


Figure 6.10. The lowest level of detail available when you associate a file type.

6. Now that you've seen what's involved with registering file types, press the Esc key three times to return to Explorer. Leave Explorer loaded for the next task.


Step 3: Review
The file type registration is fairly complex. Rarely will you have to associate files with applications because the application's installation program should register its file types automatically. You might be curious as to how Windows 95 "knows" how to open programs when you click over those programs' document files, however, so you may want to return to the File Types dialog box once in a while to study various file associations as you've done here for the .CDA audio file types.

JUST A MINUTE: Want to know what those song files are all about? The fourth part of this book, entitled "Into the Nighttime," describes the multimedia capabilities of Windows 95, including the CD Player program and audio files stored on your system.

Finding Information

These days, computers are powerful. Not only are they powerful but they hold lots of information, and wading through that information looking for something can be daunting. Windows 95 offers a powerful find feature, available both through Windows 95 Explorer, and on the Start menu, that searches your computer for files and folders that you are looking for.

JUST A MINUTE: The Find system hunts for files and folders across networks, hard disks, floppy disks, CD-ROM drives, and even Microsoft's online service called Microsoft Network. This hour describes how to look for documents and folders on the disks and CD-ROM drives only, because that's where you'll be using Find most of the time.


Task 6.4: Using Find

Step 1: Description
The Find command locates files that meet a search criteria. You can search an entire disk for a specific file or for a document that contains a certain word or phrase.

Have you used the Windows 3.1 File Manager to search for files? As you might expect, Windows 95 offers a more powerful tool for searching through documents and folders.

If you know a partial filename, you can find all files that contain that partial filename. If you want to search for a file that you modified two days ago, you can find all files with modified dates that fall on that day. You can even save searches that you perform often so you don't have to create the search criteria each time you need to search.

Step 2: Action

1. Display the Tools menu on the Explorer menu bar.

2. Select Find.

3. When the next menu appears, select Files or folders. The Find dialog box appears as shown in Figure 6.11.


Figure 6.11. The Find dialog box searches across drives for specific documents and folders.



4. Leave the Named prompt empty. If you wanted to narrow the search down to specific documents and folders that meet a certain wildcard criteria, such as Acctg*, you could type this name search pattern here.

5. Type C:\WINDOWS in the Look in prompt. You are going to scan drive C's Windows folder looking for specific files.

CAUTION:: If your Windows folder is located on a different drive, type that drive's letter instead of C, or open the Look in dropdown listbox and select the drive and folder.
6. Leave the checkmark next to the Include subfolders option. Find searches the Windows folder as well as all folders within the Windows folder.

7. Click the Date Modified tab to display the Date Modified dialog box shown in Figure 6.12. Leave the All files option marked. If you wanted to limit your search to specific dates, the Find all files created or modified option lets you search only for files modified between a beginning and ending date or within the last few days or months.


Figure 6.12. You can narrow the search to specific dates.


8. Click the Advanced tab to display the Advanced dialog box.

9. Open the Of type dropdown listbox, shown in Figure 6.13, to display a list of file types. These file types are actually descriptions for file types. (In the previous task you learned how to add descriptions for file types.) If you want to search for files of a certain type, such as for Microsoft Word 6 for Windows documents only, you can select that file type from the list, and Find ignores all files that don't match that selected type.


Figure 6.13. Search through specific file types with the Advanced dialog box.

JUST A MINUTE: For this task keep All Files and Folders selected to perform a search across every file in the Windows folder.
10. Type wind at the Containing text prompt. You are directing Find to find all files in the Windows folder that contain the text wind. The value wind is called the search string (the string of characters that you want to search for).

11. With these options selected, Find will search for files of any size. However, you could narrow the search criteria even further by limiting the search to files of at least or at most (depending on your selection in the Size is dropdown listbox) a specific number of kilobytes.

12. Click the Find Now command button and wait a bit while Windows 95 scans your disk drive. The search may take a while depending on the speed of your computer and the number of files in your Windows folder.

TIME SAVER: During a long search you can click any button on the taskbar to start or switch to another program. The file search can continue in the background while you write a letter to someone or play a game.
13. When the search completes, the Find dialog box lists the files that meet your search criteria in the bottom portion of the Find dialog box. If there are several files that meet the criteria, Windows 95 displays vertical scroll bars so you can scroll through the list of choices.

The list contains not only the document file's name, but also the folder the document's located in, the size of the document, the type of file, and the date and time the file was last modified.

14. If you select File | Save Search, Windows 95 sends the find results and search criteria to an icon located on the desktop, where the results will be available for you at a later time, if you want to work with the list after closing Explorer.

15. Select File | Close to close the dialog box.

TIME SAVER: Remember that the Start menu contains a Find command that displays the Find dialog box. The Start menu's Find command is available to you even when you're not using Explorer. You can both left-click and right-click the Start button to access the Find dialog box.


Step 3: Review
The searching capability of Windows 95 finds documents and folders on your system that match certain criteria that you provide. You can search for documents by name or by a search string. If you want to limit the search to specific modified date ranges you can do so.

Where Do the Deleted Files Go?

When you delete files using dialog boxes or Explorer, you now know that those files go to the Recycle Bin. Once in the Recycle Bin, those files are out of your way and deleted in every respect except one: They are not really deleted! Those files are gone from their original location, but they stay in the Recycle Bin until you empty the Recycle Bin.

Periodically, you'll want to check the Recycle Bin for files that you can erase completely from your hard disk. The following task explains the Recycle Bin in more detail.

TIME SAVER: The Recycle Bin icon changes from an overflowing bin to an empty one when you empty the Recycle Bin. Therefore, you can tell at a glance whether or not your Recycle Bin is empty.


Task 6.5: Using the Recycle Bin

Step 1: Description
The Recycle Bin appears on your Windows 95 desktop. Any time you want to view or delete items from the Recycle Bin, display your desktop and access the Recycle Bin icon.

TIME SAVER: If your desktop is completely covered up with running applications, you don't have to close those applications to see the desktop. Minimize your application windows until you can see the Recycle Bin on the desktop. If you want to quickly minimize your desktop open windows, right-click the taskbar and select Minimize All Windows.

Step 2: Action

1. Display your desktop by minimizing any open windows you may have on the screen.

2. Double-click the Recycle Bin icon. The Recycle Bin window opens up to one like the window shown in Figure 6.14.


Figure 6.14. The Recycle Bin lists deleted files that you can recover.


3. If you've been following along in this book so far, you should have one or two files already in the Recycle Bin. There may be many more, depending on what has taken place on your system. You'll recognize the format of the Recycle Bin's column headings; you can adjust the width of the columns by dragging the column separators with your mouse.

JUST A MINUTE: If you've deleted portions of a file (the scraps), the Name column contains the first few characters from that deleted text.
4. The bottom of the Recycle Bin contains the total number of bytes (characters) the deleted files consume on your disk. In other words, if you were to empty the entire contents of the Recycle Bin in Figure 6.14, you would add a total of 303 kilobytes of free space to your computer system. Look at your Recycle Bin's status bar (the bar of information at the bottom of dialog boxes), to see how much free space you could regain by emptying your Recycle Bin.

CAUTION:: The Recycle Bin dialog box contains all deleted files on your system--not just the deleted files on one of your disk drives.
5. Most of the Recycle Bin dialog box's menu bar commands are identical to the commands on Open dialog boxes and the Explorer. There is even a Recycle Bin toolbar that you might want to display if you plan to work a lot with the Recycle Bin. (You can display the toolbar with View | Toolbar.) When you select an item (or more than one item using a Ctrl+click), the menu commands apply to that selected item.

6. Double-click one of the Recycle Bin's items to display a Properties dialog box for that item. It tells you additional information about the deleted item, such as the date you created and deleted the item. Figure 6.15 shows a Properties dialog box. If you wanted to delete only that selected item, you could do so. If you selected more than one item, you could delete them also.


Figure 6.15. You may display the properties of any selected item.


7. Perhaps the most important menu command is File | Empty Recycle Bin. This command empties the entire Recycle Bin. You can select this command now, if there is nothing in your Recycle Bin that you think you'll need later.

8. Select File | Close to close the Recycle Bin dialog box.

TIME SAVER: Select View to look at a Recycle Bin document if you want to verify the contents before deleting the document.

JUST A MINUTE: Using a dialog box, Windows 95 asks once more if you are sure you want to empty the Recycle Bin. This precaution ensures that you don't inadvertently erase files that you might really need.


Step 3: Review
The Recycle Bin lets you delete files without really removing those files from your disk. All deleted files go to the Recycle Bin. Those files are not truly deleted from your disk until you empty the file from the Recycle Bin. You can empty a single selected file, several selected files, or the entire Recycle Bin.

CAUTION:: Remember that the Recycle Bin does not hold files you delete from the MS-DOS prompt. When you use MS-DOS to delete a file, Windows 95 erases the file as soon as you issue the command. Unlike the MS-DOS that came with earlier versions of Windows, Windows 95's MS-DOS does not include an UNDELETE command. Make sure you want to delete a file when you issue the MS-DOS DEL or ERASE commands.

Making Windows 95 Easier

There are numerous ways to make Windows 95 easier for your day-to-day work. Three often confusing time-saving techniques are

It's not that these three time-saving techniques are difficult to understand, but they are difficult to set up. Once you set them up, though, these three techniques make life easier for the Windows 95 user. Once you create single-key access to a program, or a shortcut, or change the Start menu, those time-savers stay in effect, making work inside Windows 95 much more efficient.

Task 6.6: Adding Time-Savers

Step 1: Description
The time-savers described in this task may not be for everyone, but they often help users of Windows 95. You'll have to experiment with the techniques until you find the ones that help you the most.

Step 2: Action

1. You can add programs to the Start menu by displaying the Start menu and selecting Settings.

2. Select Taskbar from the Settings menu.

3. The tabbed Taskbar Properties dialog box appears that you learned about in the last hour. Click the Start Menu Programs tab to display the Start Menu Programs dialog box shown in Figure 6.16.


Figure 6.16. Add or remove programs from the Start menu here.


4. Suppose that you want to put the Windows 95 Calculator program (normally found on the Accessories menu) on the Start menu. You would click the Add menu button to display the Create Shortcut dialog box shown in Figure 6.17.


Figure 6.17. Use the Create Shortcut dialog box to add a specific program to the Start menu.

CAUTION:: Before adding programs to the Start menu, you must know the command and location of the program you are adding. If you do not know the path to the program, you can use the Browse command button to search the computer for the program.
5. Type c:\windows\calc.exe at the Command line text prompt. If your version of Windows 95 resides on a drive other than C, change the prompt accordingly. The Windows 95 calculator program's exact filename is calc.exe, and the program is stored in the Windows 95 directory (folder), which is usually named windows.

6. Click Next to move to the next screen in the dialog box. Figure 6.18 shows the dialog box that appears.


Figure 6.18. You must tell Windows 95 where to store the shortcut.


7. The Select Program Folder tells Windows 95 where to place the icon and program labeled Calc. If you want to place the program on the Start menu, double-click Start Menu at the top of the scrolling listbox. (If you prefer to have the calculator appear in a menu that cascades off from the Start menu, select a folder and double-click over the folder.) In the Select Program Folder dialog box each folder represents a menu.

8. Once you select a location for the shortcut, Windows 95 displays one last dialog box asking for a name that will appear as that program's title on the menu. Leave the Calc title if you're following along on this example.

9. Click the Finish command button to finish the process. When the dialog box goes away, the Taskbar Properties dialog box reappears.

10. Close the Taskbar Properties dialog box by clicking OK.

11. Display the Start menu. As shown in Figure 6.19, the Start menu contains the calculator program that is now only two clicks away at any time.

CAUTION:: Don't change the Start menu too dramatically until you are comfortable with Windows 95. The Start menu is probably best left alone in its current helpful state until you get more acquainted with Windows 95. If you share a computer with others, you could confuse your co-workers if you change the Start menu too much.


Figure 6.19. You can now access the calculator quickly within Windows 95.


Windows Minute

Shortcuts

The name shortcut has a double-meaning in Windows 95--one of the reasons that this task's time-savers can get confusing.

A shortcut is actually better termed an alias file. When you create a shortcut--whether that shortcut is a shortcut menu command, such as having the calculator now on the Start menu bar, or whether that shortcut is a shortcut you create in Open dialog boxes or through Explorer--Windows 95 does not make a copy of the calculator program in every location where you place the icon. Windows 95 actually creates a link to that program, called a shortcut in Windows 95 terminology, that points to the program on your disk wherever its location may be.

If you were to right-click over a document or folder in Explorer's right window, you would see the Create Shortcut command that creates a shortcut to the document or folder you are pointing at. Windows 95 creates a new icon and title (the title begins with Shortcut to_) but does not actually create a copy of the item. Instead, Windows 95 creates a link to that item. The link reduces disk space taken up by multiple copies of the same files. You may create a shortcut even to a networked item that resides on a different computer altogether; the networked shortcut appears to exist on your own computer's desktop or menu, while it actually resides on the other machine.

12. Delete the Calculator program from the Start menu (you can add it later if you really want it there) by selecting Settings | Taskbar from the Start menu, selecting the Start Menu Programs tab, and clicking the Remove command button. Instead of the Create Shortcut dialog box, the Select Program Folder box appears next. Double-Click the Programs folder under the Start Menu icon, as highlighted in Figure 6.18.

13. Select the Calc icon and click the Remove command button to remove the calculator program from the Start menu, and return to the Start Menu Programs tabbed dialog box.

14. Press the Advanced command button. Windows 95 starts the Explorer program.

15. If you click the programs folder, Explorer displays the items in the Start menu's first set of cascaded menus as shown in Figure 6.20.


Figure 6.20. Explorer starts so that you can add a single-key quick access to any program.


16. Open the Accessories folder to view the contents of the Accessories group. Remember that you're viewing contents of the Accessories menu that cascades from the Start menu. You'll see the Calculator icon appear in this folder group.

17. Right-click over the Calculator icon to display a menu.

18. Select Properties to display the Calculator program's Properties tabbed dialog box.

19. Click the Shortcut tab to display the dialog box shown in Figure 6.21.

20. Press Alt+K to move the cursor to the Shortcut key text prompt. Type the letter C at the prompt. Windows 95 changes the C to Ctrl + Alt + C on the screen. Ctrl+Alt+C is now the shortcut for the Calculator program. If you run a program that uses a shortcut key you've added to Windows 95, the program's shortcut key takes precedence over the Windows 95 shortcut key.

21. Click the OK command button to close the dialog box.

22. Select File | Close to exit Explorer.

Whenever you press Ctrl+Alt+C, Windows 95 starts the calculator program. This single-key shortcut (actually a simultaneous three-key shortcut) enables you to start programs instantly, from virtually anywhere in the Windows 95 system, without having to locate the program's menu or icon.


Figure 6.21. You can now add a single-key shortcut that will start the calculator program.


Step 3: Review
You can now add a shortcut to the Start menu, to any of Start's cascaded menus, to the desktop, and even a single-key shortcut to the programs you use most often. Although it may not always be obvious how to create shortcuts, each of the ones presented in this section helps you get started faster with the programs that you want to run.

Just wait until you get to Hour 8's chapter! Hour 8 explains a faster way to add programs to your Start menu. As you'll learn throughout this book, Windows 95 typically gives you many ways to do different jobs. The taskbar at the bottom of your screen provides many shortcuts as Hour 8, "Manage Your Desktop," explains.

Summary

This hour showed you how to use the Explorer to search your computer system for documents and folders, as well as how to manage the computer system using a uniform interface for all your storage devices. Copying and moving among folders and documents are painless functions when you use Explorer's two-window interface. You can display the item to be moved in the right window and drag that item to any device listed in the left window. It is also inside Explorer that you associate file types to programs so that you can click a document and run the appropriate program that works with that particular type of document.

Not only can Explorer help you manage your system, it also helps you locate information quickly. By using the Find command in Explorer (also available from the Start menu), you can search for files based on the file name, contents, size, and date last modified.

There are three shortcuts that help you access your programs. You can add a shortcut to the desktop, to the Start menu system, and even to the keyboard to start programs quickly.

Workshop

Term Review

byte One character of storage.

Explorer A powerful system-listing application that gives you both high-level and detailed descriptions of your computer system and the files on the system.

Microsoft Network An online service available from Microsoft.

registered A file is registered when you've associated an application with that file's extension.

search string A string of one or more characters, such as a filename, that you want to search for.

shortcut When you create a shortcut by adding programs to the Start menu or by creating shortcuts within Explorer or within Open dialog boxes, Windows 95 creates a link (the shortcut) to that item instead of wasting disk space with two separate files that have the same contents.

status bar A message area at the bottom of a window that updates to show you what is happening at any given moment. For example, when you click over a menu item, the status bar tells you what that menu item will do.

title bar A location above many Windows 95 windows (such as the Explorer right-hand window) that describes the documents you are currently viewing.

Q&A

Q Why does it seem as if much of the Explorer functions are available elsewhere, such as in the My Computer window and in Open dialog boxes?
A You can find many of Explorer's capabilities elsewhere. Windows 95 is known for giving you the tools that you need where you need them. Many other operating environments, including previous versions of Windows, put their tools in one place, which made you hunt for the proper program tool when you needed to do something such as move a file.
Windows 95 makes its tools available to you from a variety of locations because you'll often need to perform the same tasks while doing a wide range of activities.

Q Why would I use Windows Explorer to copy or move files when I can do the same thing from the Open dialog boxes as I learned in the previous hour?
A Don't confuse the ability to copy and move files within dialog boxes with that same ability within Explorer. It is true that you can copy and move from either. The one you decide to use depends on your current Windows 95 activity. For example, if you are in the middle of using a word processor, opening, and saving documents, you might decide to copy or move a file from one location to another. You might as well display the Open dialog box to do that. If, however, you are not working on a Windows 95 application, but want to copy or change files around, start Explorer from the desktop and use Explorer to handle the task. In addition, you cannot move or copy files between hardware devices in Open dialog boxes, but you can with Explorer.

Q Do files that I delete, but have yet to empty from the Recycle Bin, still consume disk space?
A Certainly. The Recycle Bin must keep the entire file intact or you would not be able to recover it from the Recycle Bin if you needed the file again. Although files in the Recycle Bin consume disk space, they are retrievable at any time until you empty the Recycle Bin.
Only after emptying the Recycle Bin, does Windows 95 physically delete the file from your disk. Once it is gone from the Recycle Bin, you cannot recover the file. If you get short on disk space, the first thing you should do is search the Recycle Bin for any and all files there that you can delete.

Q I'm confused; are there three kinds of shortcuts?
A There are three versions of shortcuts in Windows 95. You can add a single-key shortcut key to any program. When you press Ctrl+Alt and that key at the same time, Windows 95 starts that program. You could be working in Explorer, at the desktop, or in virtually any other program, but when you press that shortcut keystroke, Windows 95 starts the program you've assigned to that shortcut key.
When you right-click over a document or folder and select the Create Shortcut command, Windows 95 creates a shortcut to the item, which is really an alias name that knows the location of the original document or folder, but that acts like a copy of the item.
When you add items to the Start menu (or any menu cascading out from the Start menu), you must create a shortcut to that item because you don't want a copy of the same program all over your disk drive. Therefore, the menu command will be a shortcut to the program that, once you select that menu item, finds the program on the disk drive and starts the program.

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