Working with files, folders WINDOWS: the concept of a file, folder, saving, renaming. How to organize files and folders on your computer Copying and moving files and folders

Available on every computer. In this lesson, you will learn what files and folders are and why they are needed.

What is a file

To better understand what are files and folders I will give you an analogy with stationery. Imagine that you have several sheets of colored paper. They come in different sizes, colors and shapes. You can put these sheets in a drawer of your desk, where they will be stored, and when you need to take a sheet, you will open the required drawer and take a sheet.

So in a computer, each piece of paper is a file, and a folder is a box in which you put files.

All data on the computer is stored as files. File Is the smallest unit of data in a computer. Film, text document, drawing, song - these are all files.

A sheet of paper has properties: color, size, weight, etc. Each file also has its own properties: size (the amount of space it takes up on the hard disk), name (file name), type (text, music, etc.). To understand what type the file has, you need to look at its name.

The file name is written as “name.extension”.

You can understand the file type by the extension. For example, the "report.txt" file indicates that you have a text file. The file extension is needed to know which program to open this file. The text file is opened using the Notepad program. There are a huge number of file extensions, and it's impossible to remember them all.

Why are folders needed

Let's go back to the pieces of paper. You have many different sheets of paper in different sizes. It is inconvenient to store them in one drawer, they mix and it is difficult to find a small leaf among the large ones. It is best to put each type of paper in a separate box. So are the files on the computer. Imagine that you are storing music files, films, pictures in one place. It turns out a lot of small, in which it is very inconvenient to find the desired movie or song.

Folders are needed to separate files by type, like boxes divide paper. You can create as many folders as you like and place files in them. For example: create a "Movies" folder and store movies in it, and store songs in the music folder.

But it is inconvenient to store all the songs in the "Music" package. There are many performers there. You can create a folder in the Music folder with the artist name or album name. So, in the end, we get a directory of folders in which it is convenient to store files.

This concludes the lesson. We will look at how to create folders in the next lesson.

The computer writes the incoming data to the sectors of the hard drive in order: from beginning to end, and then enters the coordinates of this data into a special table.

As we all know, all information is stored on a computer's hard drive. The computer writes the incoming data to the sectors of the hard drive in order: from beginning to end, and then enters the coordinates of this data into a special table.

When he needs to read the written data, he turns to the table and uses it to find the information he needs. This is how the computer sees the information stored in it.

With users, the situation is somewhat different. In order not to create a complete mess in our head with scraps of data recorded here and there, scattered across sectors, and so on, all data is presented to users in the form of files.

A file is a named amount of information. Figuratively speaking, a file can be compared to a notebook, which can contain anything. The file stores certain information. It can be text, song, drawing, or program. Each file has a name and extension, which are spelled with a period.

Why a file needs a name is understandable (for the same as a person), but why does he need an extension?
The fact is that the extension of the file name indicates that the file belongs to some type, thereby prompting us what kind of information is stored in it.

For example, a file with the .txt extension refers to text files: it can be created, opened and read, edited, saved, and closed. Files with the extensions .exe, .com, .bat refer to executable files (sometimes referred to simply as programs or applications) and so on.

Most modern applications (programs) have the .exe extension. To run any program, you need to go to the folder that contains the program, as well as service files, and run the file with the program name and .exe extension.

Sometimes the operating system hides file extensions. To make them visible, you should open the My Computer window (the icon is on the desktop) and in the View system menu, select Folder Options. There, on the View tab, you will see the item Hide extensions for registered file types.

By unchecking the box next to this item and clicking OK, you can see the extensions of all files. In the same window, you can make absolutely all invisible system and service files available on your system visible to you by selecting Show all files.

However, it is not recommended for beginners to do this, because by mistake you can delete or move a file necessary for the operation of the entire system, which can lead to the loss of the system operability... Any file of the type registered in the operating system can be opened by double-clicking on it.

Each file, like any other object, has its own context menu, which, as you already know, can be invoked by right-clicking on the file icon.

The file is considered registered in the system, if the operating system "knows" that this file can be opened by any program installed on the system. For example, files with the .txt extension can be read in Notepad. .Doc document files are readable in Word and so on.

For user convenience and to avoid confusion, files are located in folders. If all the files on the hard drive were randomly located where necessary, it would be very difficult to find the document or, for example, a picture you need.

By the way, here's how it is created in!

If you periodically revise all the folders on your computer to find a specific file, then it is worth considering how to create your own file storage system and organize your workspace once and for all.

You will have to spend more than one hour to organize files and folders manually, but in the future this time will pay off, since you will know exactly where this or that document is, and this will inevitably affect the efficiency of your work.

Before you start, you should take a piece of paper and draw a future system of organizing folders and files on it.

Decide on which disk you will store the information, whether you will duplicate it, and where and how to archive it. It all depends on how many logical drives you have and what cloud storage you use.

Create a hierarchical structure. Think over the names of your main folders: home, work, personal, music, video, pictures, photos, games (there should be a minimum number of them). Next, you should decide on the names subfolders... There shouldn't be many of them either - no more than twenty.

For example, the main folder "Home" might include: finance, education, travel, health. Music, videos and books are sorted by genre, pictures - by themes: nature, animals. It is better to store photos separately from pictures.

Cleaning your computer from unnecessary files

Review your files and delete those that you haven't looked at in over a year. If you don't want to delete, archive it. Rename important documents, group or vice versa, split files by content.

Transfer all documents and folders created on the desktop (if any) to your hard drive. It is recommended to create only shortcuts to documents and programs on the desktop.

You can also use the popular CCleaner program to clean your computer.

Organize easy access to all your folders

Using the explorer tree: just drag and drop folders you use frequently to Favorites. For quick access, this folder can be pinned to the taskbar: right-click on it ⇨ Panels ⇨ Create toolbar.

Use file managers if you're comfortable.

Create desktop shortcuts.

How to make a shortcut: right-click on the desktop ⇨ "create a shortcut" and copy the path to your folder, file, url in the window.

Shortcuts can also be created in folders - for example, a link to another, related folder to quickly move between them. For example, in my "Music" folder, which is located on the C: drive, there is a shortcut to the music that I store on the Yandex drive.

A program for recognizing and sorting musical compositions - at picard.musicbrainz.org.
Remove duplicate files with free programs such as DupKiller and Auslogics Duplicate File Finder.

In Windows 8 and 8.1 it is possible to place a shortcut to any folder in the tiled start menu: right-click on the file or folder icon and select - "Pin to Start Screen".

Once you've set up your system and organized your files and folders, and cleaned up the trash, follow some simple rules to help you keep the new order.

How to organize files and folders on a computer, infographics

File and folder storage rules

The main rule is that the name of each folder and file should correspond to the content as much as possible.
Work with files and folders "at the entrance": it is better to spend time and immediately come up with an adequate name than to revise a lot of documents, trying to understand what and where.

Use text files for sticky notes and notes. Create in each folder text documents (.txt) with the title "Read", where briefly describe the folder structure, whatever you think is necessary: \u200b\u200bwhich files are duplicated, which version of the document is newer or how one document differs from another.

Create the "Archive" folder and drop irrelevant files there. Do not forget about the structure of the archive: in order not to clutter up this folder and quickly find the desired document, create folders in it with names that duplicate your main ones: home, work, photos, etc.

The downloaded files, such as programs, either immediately rename, or again create the file "Read" in the folder and briefly describe what kind of program it is. I'm sure this is a problem for many - I downloaded the program and forgot what it is, and why it at all.

Do not store a prefabricated hodgepodge on different topics in one file, it is better to break them up according to text documents with appropriate names if you have no time to deal with them.

You can organize the content of large text files by creating tables of contents in them. Thus, to find out the contents of the file, you only need to move the cursor to the file shortcut and the first page with the table of contents will appear in the preview.

If the file contains an article or an excerpt of an article from the Internet, there must be a link to it so that you can return to the original if necessary.

In each folder, you can create a special document where links from the Internet will be posted on the topic, so as not to search in browser bookmarks.

For working files that are subject to frequent editing and have more than one version, it is worth creating separate folders with the txt file, where their history will be briefly described. And instead of the names, put the project number and the date of receipt of the order.

For example, ПР8_10-03-14 can mean “project number eight from the tenth of March”.

Review all files once a month and get rid of unnecessary ones: delete or send to the archive. Old unused files distract attention and interfere with efficient work.

And don't forget to duplicate the files that are most important to you.

I hope these tips will help you organize your files and folders, which in turn will increase your productivity.

All information, in the form of files, recorded on a hard disk or any other medium for storage, reading and processing is located in folders. Folders are also called directories. What is a folder? Figuratively speaking, a folder is a kind of container for storing other containers with information -. In a simplified way, you can make an analogy with a filing cabinet, where information is stored in cards. Imagine that cards are files, and folders are boxes with them, in turn boxes are stored in cabinets.

A folder (directory or directory) is a location on the media where files or other file folders are stored. Those. such a storage system can be quite extensive. The main folder contains another folder or folders, which may contain another folder, etc. Subfolders are commonly referred to as subfolders or subdirectories, a system designed to organize the information stored on a computer's hard drive. All folders have names, the names of which are given by the operating system itself, the program, or yourself, if the directory is created by you yourself. You can create a folder in by right-clicking in the Explorer window or on the desktop. Clicking the button brings up a menu with intended user actions, where you need to select the "create" menu item with a drop-down submenu "folder".

The base or root of this whole system is the root folder.

What is the root folder?

This is the first and main folder (root) in which all the others are located. It has no name and is denoted by the special character "\\". For example, the designation C: \\ tells us that this is the root folder of the C drive. If you created a directory "My Music" in the root folder, then its path will look like this - C: \\ My Music. Suppose that in the folder "My Music" you have created another one with the name "Rock", where you will store audio files with rock bands, then in this case its path will be "C: \\ My Music \\ Rock. In turn, let's say that you wanted to sort rock music into groups. In this case, it would be logical to create folders with group names in the “Rock” subfolder. Thus, we get a chain of subfolders.

What does a folder look like?

In the Windows operating system, a folder is indicated by a yellow graphic element in the form of a stationery folder. The icon may differ slightly depending on the appearance settings of the items.