October 25, 2003

Suppose it is your first day in school, you are standing at the main gate of the school wondering where to go because you know nothing about the location of your classroom, staff room, principal’s office and assembly hall. Don’t you think that it would be easy for you to locate different sections, if you have a map of the school?

Now come to the wonder world of computers. In order to find out what’s on your computer you need a map of the computer, which is also known as windows explorer.


What is Windows Explorer?

Windows operating system consists of a program, which gives you the opportunity to view and open the contents of your computer. This program is known as Windows explorer.

 

Functions of Windows Explorer

* Hard Disk Drives are just like a file and folders storeroom on your computer. You can view files and folders of all the local disks (drive c, drive d, drive e and drive f) with Windows Explorer.

* It gives you details of drive A (floppy disk) and drive G (CD drive).

* Windows explorer displays a list of all the programs on your computer.

* You can move any file or folder from one location to another by dragging and dropping its icon to that location.

* All details about the desktop’s contents of your computer are available in Windows Explorer.

* You can use Windows Explorer to start any program or open any file on your computer.

* Click on file menu of the Windows Explorer to view the properties (size, location, attribute, etc) of any selected item.

* Search button helps you find any file or folder on your computer.

 

How to use Windows Explorer

When you open Windows Explorer through the program menu as shown in the above figure, a window is opened on the screen of the computer. This window is divided into two unequal parts (you can change the size of each part). The Narrow left side gives you the tree view of folders and drives of your computer. Captions and icons represent each folder and drive. There is a plus (+) sign with every folder.

 

Tree view of Windows Explorer

As you click on this plus sign a list of all the sub-folders appears on the left side as well as on the right side. Notice that as the main folder opens the plus sign changes to negative (-). Now click any folder or file to view its contents.

Suppose you want to explore the disk drives of your computer from Windows Explorer. Click on the “My computer” option from the left side, to get a list of all the drives. To view the contents of each drive simply click the drive.

 

Opening of ‘My computer’ folder

Windows Explorer gives you a variety of ways to view the folders and files on the right side of the window, for example click view and select the icon, thumbnails, details, and lists of the different files and folders.

 

Tile view of a folder

From “edit” option select all items or files on the right side of the screen. These files can be cut, copied and pasted to any location.

To view the details of any file click the “choose details” option. This option will provide you with details of the specified file such as author, owner, attributes, pages, status, year, pictures, etc.

Windows Explorer is an easy to use program, as you click its different buttons and menu options you will discover more of its exciting features.

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