Windows
XP
&
7
> Windows XP Tutorials > Windows 7 (and Vista) Tutorials 1 The Windows XP Desktop
2 Exploring the Start Menu
3 How to Create a Desktop Shortcut 4 The Hard Drive Explained
5 How Big is your Hard Drive? 6 The Windows Explorer tool 7 How to Create a New Folder 8 Moving Folders on your Hard Drive 9 Copy from a CD to a Hard Drive 10 Finding Files with Windows XP 11 Windows XP and Wallpapers 12 How to change your Screen Saver 13. Zip and Unzip files with WinZip
1 The Windows 7 Desktop 2 Desktop Wallpaper 3 The Taskbar
4 Setting the Date and Time 5 Toolbars
6 The Windows 7 Start Button 7 Share your computer with others 8 Setting Parental Controls in Windows 7 9 hard_drives explained
10 The importance of file extensions 11 Copying Pictures to a New Folder 12 Adding Information to an Image 13 Sorting Images
14 How to take a Screenshot in Windows 7 > Windows XP - Delving Deeper
1 Accessibility Options - StickyKeys 2 Accessibility Options - FilterKeys 3 Accessibility Options - Mouse 4 How to Install a New Font 5 Power Options
6 Folder Options
7 Customize Your Folder Views
8 Change the Sounds that Window XP makes 9 Task Bar Settings
10 Customize Your Start Menu
11 Windows XP User Account 12 Windows XP Security Centre 13 System Properties - General Tab 14 Take your PC back to an earlier Date 15 System Properties - Advanced 16 How to change your Home Page 17 Internet Options - Security 18 Privacy - What is a Cookie? 19 Internet Options - Content Advisor 20 Internet Options - AutoComplete > Outlook Express Email Tutorials
1. How to Set up an new Email account 2 How to Add Email Attachments
3. How to Backup Emails in Outlook Express 4. How to Restore your Outlook Express Emails 5. Backup an Outlook Express Address Book
6. Backup an Outlook Express Email Account 7. Set up a Second Outlook Express Account 8. Add a Signature to all outgoing emails 9. Outlook Express Stationery
> How to Secure your PC from Intruders 1 Are you infected with SpyWare?
2 How to tackle Spam
3 Anti-Virus Protection- Our Recommendation 4 Why you NEED a Firewall!
5 What is a Trojan, and should I be worried? 6 What is a RootKit
7 Online Banking - Essential Security
> Beginners Guide to Going Wireless 1 The Basics of Going Wireless
2 Wireless Adaptors - you need one!
3 Wireless Routers Explained - all the Jargon! 4 What are wireless signals?
5 Are Wireless Signals Dangerous?
6 Going Wireless - What to Buy
7 Belkin Wireless G+ MIMO Modem Router 8 US Robotics Wireless MAXg
9 Belkin Broadband Wireless Router 10 Buffalo AirStation G54 High Power
Beginner's Computing
The Windows XP Desktop
When you first switch your computer and monitor on, your screen might look something like this, in the link below (It's too big for this page!).
Click here to see the desktop
This is the Windows XP Desktop. There are a number of thing to notice about the Desktop. First, all those little pictures on top of the big picture. (Your screen may well be nice and colourful). There are 4 in the image above. The pictures are called icons.
To get some practice with using your mouse, click on each of your Desktop icons. (If you have only one icon, the Recycle Bin, then practice with that for the time being. We'll see how to add shortcuts soon.) Click on them with your Left mouse button, a Single Click. You should notice that the icons change colour, usually blue. When they do change colour, the icon is said to be selected.
Now click on any of your icons with the Right mouse button, again a Single Click. What happens now? You should see a menu popping up with a list of items on it. The menu pops up because of that Right Click - the Right click is usually a shortcut click. Each icon on your Desktop has a shortcut associated with it. Indeed, the icons themselves are shortcuts. Each picture is associated with a programme on your
computer. When you clicked an icon with your left mouse button, the only thing that happened was that it turned a different colour. You had selected it by clicking the icon with your left mouse button.
Now try to double click each icon with the Left mouse button and see what happens. You should find that some sort of software, or programme is launched.
So the desktop icons are shortcuts to your programmes. That's why they are there - so that you can get at your programmes with a Double Click of your left mouse button.
Move on to the Next Part --> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
The Windows XP Start Menu
We saw in the last lesson that the desktop can be used to launch your software. Another way to launch your programmes is through the Start menu at the bottom of the Desktop. Your Start button should look something like the one below:
Click your Start button once with your Left hand mouse button. What you will see is a menu popping up. This one below:
Notice the name "KC" next to the image. Yours will show the name you typed when setting up Windows XP.
The menu bar is split into three sections. The first section, the white one on the left, has seven items in it. The first three are shortcuts to a web browser, email software, and easyPHP. The four items under this are shortcuts to recently used programmes. These will change as you start up and close down software
packages. Yours will probably be different items. One Single click with the Left mouse button on any of these items will launch some software.
The second section has just one item in it: All Programs. There is a green arrow next to this text. Clicking on the green arrow will bring up menu where you can find all the software installed on your computer. And this is the one we're interested in. We'll explain it in more detail in a moment.
The section on the right of the Start menu, the one in pale blue, is for special areas of your computer, and shortcuts to folders and files that are used frequently. You can also get help here, and search your
computer for files and folders (we'll see how to do this shortly.)
At the bottom of the start menu are two buttons, one for logging off and one for closing down your
off your computer is Shut Down. Clicking it once with your Left mouse button will give you this pop up box, called a dialogue box.
The dialogue box is giving you four options. Click the second option "Turn Off" with your left mouse button, a Single Click, if you want to completely close down your computer. The other popular option is "Restart". If you change your mind, click the Cancel button at the bottom. The dialogue box will disappear.
But let's concentrate on that green button on the Start Menu, the one to the right of "All Programs." Click the button with your left mouse button. A menu will appear. Actually, it's a sub menu - a menu on a menu! It will look something like the one below:
As you can see, the Programs Sub menu is fairly small, but it gets bigger the more software you install. Your Programs menu may well be longer than this one. When you install some new software, a shortcut to it will probably be added to this Programs Sub menu.
Notice the black arrows on the menu. This indicates that there is another submenu available. The menu will appear when you move your mouse to an item that has a black arrow next to it.
Move your mouse over to the Programs Sub menu. Then move your mouse up and down it. You should see a light coloured line moving with your mouse. This line is telling you which item of the menu you are currently on.
To launch one of your software programs, click an item on the list with your Left mouse button, a Single Click. When you do, the software is launched.
To quickly close down the software you have launched, look in the right hand corner. Search for this, in the picture below
Click the red X to close down your software. The one on the left of the three, with the single line, will make your software disappear. But it will not have closed down. Look at the bottom of your Desktop. You'll see something like this:
The two long rectangles indicate that two programmes are still open. In the image above, the Firefox web browser is open, as well as the Home and Learn Web Editor.
What we'll do now is to create a Shortcut to your "My Documents" folder, which we will place on the Desktop. You will then be able to open this folder by Double-Clicking its icon on the desktop.
<--Back One Page Move on to the Next Part--> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
How to create a Desktop Shortcut in
Windows XP
To create a shortcut to a programme, and display the shortcut on the Desktop, do the following: Click the Start button on your desktop
From the Start menu, locate the "All Programms" item
Move your mouse to the programme you want to create a shortcut to. In the image below, we've gone for the Home and Learn Web Editor
Right click on the menu item to see a new menu appear:
On this menu, locate the "Send to" item
When you left click Desktop (create shortcut), a new shortcut appears on your main screen - the Desktop.
Double click your new shortcut to test it out. You should see a new window opening, and the programme will start
Now that you've had a bit of practice with your mouse, we'll move on to exploring the files and folders on your hard drive.
We'll start with the Hard Drive itself.
<--Back One PageMove on to the Next Part--> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
Windows XP
Tutorials
What is a Hard Drive?
A hard drive is nothing more than a magnetised storage area. Your Operating System is stored on your hard drive, as well as all your software programmes, like Microsoft Word. The hard drive is actually a few circular disks stacked one on top of the other. A little arm moves over the disks and writes things to these circular platters, and reads them. When you save a file or create a new folder, think of these circular platters being written to and you'll have a basic idea of just what your hard drive is.
A hard drive is given a letter of the alphabet for convenience sake, and in most computers this will be the letter C. That's why the hard drive is popularly know as the C Drive. There are other drives on your computer. These are the usual drives on modern Personal Computers:
Floppy Drive or A drive There will be a thin slot on the front of your computer. Into the gap, adisk is inserted. This is your floppy drive, and the disk is called a floppy disk
CD Rom Drive or D Drive Press a button on the front of your computer and a tray will probably slide out. The tray will accept a circular disk - a CD Rom.
DVD Drive A DVD disk is the same size and shape as a CD, but can hold more
information. You can play a CD in a DVD Drive, but you can't play a DVD disk in a CD Rom Drive
CD/DVD Writer These types of drives are for creating your own CD's or DVD's. They
are becoming statndard on a new computer
A modern Hard Drive is measured in Gigabytes. To find out how big your Hard drive is, click the next part of this lesson.
<--Back One Page Move on to the Next Part--> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
Windows XP Tutorials
How Big is your Hard Drive?
Find the "My Computer" icon Start menu, and click with your left mouse button. When the window opens it will look something like this one:
The "My Computer" screen shows you different areas of your computer. In the picture, there are icons for the Floppy Drive, The C drive, and the D Drive. Don't worry if yours is not the same. But you'll probably have a D drive icon. There is a CD over the D drive icon, indicating that there is a CD in the disk drive on this computer.
The one we're interested in is the C drive icon. This is the Hard drive. There are two ways you can check your Hard drive to see how big it is. The easiest way is to click once on the C icon with your Left mouse button. The area on the left of the window will change to this:
The "Details" section at the bottom is showing how much space is free on your hard drive. It also shows how big the Hard drive is. GB stand for Gigabytes. So this Hard drive is just over 4 gigabytes. Not very big in today's computer market, where Hard drive ten and twenty times this size are common!
There is another way to check how big your Hard drive is.
Click on the C icon from the My Computer screen. But click on it with your Right mouse button. You'll get a menu similar to the one below.
Here, we get a pie chart showing us information about the hard drive: Used Space, Free Space and Capacity (How big your hard drive is). The Capacity is showing 19.0 Gigabytes, Used space 17.9 Gigabytes, and Free space 1.01 Gigabytes.
Click the OK button to get rid of the dialogue box (One click with the left mouse button.) Get rid of the "My Computer" screen by clicking the red X in the top right hand corner.
What we'll do now is create a folder on the hard drive. But we'll use the Windows Explorer to do it.
<--Back One PageMove on to the Next Part--> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
Windows XP Tutorials: The Windows
Explorer
In this lesson, we'll create a new folder on the hard drive, but we'll use a tool called the Windows Explorer to do it. To bring up the Windows Explorer, do the following:
From your Desktop, Click the Start button in the bottom left hand corner of your screen Click the green "All Programs" button
From the Sub menu that pops up, click on Accessories
The following sub menu appears. Click on Windows Explorer at the bottom:
The Windows Explorer is a great tool for finding your way around your hard drive. You can quickly locate files and folders, or browse for something in particular. Another quick way to bring up the Windows explorer is to do the following:
Press the Windows key on your keyboard (The Windows key is located in the bottom left hand corner of your keyboard, in between the Ctrl key and the Alt key. If there is a gap between these two keys then you have an older keyboard, and the shortcut won't work. Sorry!)
Once you've located the Windows key, keep it held down
With the Windows key held down, press the letter "e" on your keyboard
If your screen is not split in two like the one above, do this:
On the menu bar across the top that says File, Edit, View, Go, etc, select the View option by clicking on the word "View" with your Left mouse button
A menu will drop down
Move your mouse pointer down to "Explorer Bar"
From the sub menu that pops up, click the word "Folders" once with your Left mouse button Your screen should split in two like the one above
The left hand side of the Windows Explorer screen shows different areas of your computer. In the previous image, the left part of Windows Explorer starts with Desktop. Next we have My Documents, My Computer, 3 ½ floppy, the C drive, the CD Rom Drive, Control Panel and so on right down to Recycle bin as the last option.
Click on the first option, Desktop, once with your Left mouse button. This will show you all the shortcuts you have on your Desktop, including the "My Documents" shortcut we placed there earlier. But the list of shortcuts will appear on the right hand side. And that is the main idea behind the Windows Explorer -Clicking something on the left hand side will bring up a list on the right hand side.
Click on the letter C in the left hand side of your Windows Explorer. A list of all the files and folders on your hard drive will appear on the right hand side. Like the one below, but with different folder names on your computer.
When we create a new folder, it will appear on the right hand side. But because we clicked the letter C on the left hand side, the new folder will be created in the root folder of the C drive.
The Root folder? What's that when it's at home? Well, the rectangular yellow icons on the right hand side are all folders. You can put one folder inside another. All of those folders on the right hand side, and all the single files, are inside the C Folder. The main folder on a hard drive is known as the Root Folder. This is the symbolic notation for the Root Folder on the C Drive
C:\
You can see that notation in the Windows Explorer address bar. (If you can't see an address bar, on the menu bar across the top that has File, Edit, View, Go, click the View option. On the menu that drops down, move your mouse pointer to Toolbars. From the sub menu that pops up, Click the words "Address bar" once with your left mouse button.)
The Windows Explorer address bar looks like this:
Notice how the address bar says C:\. This is the root folder of your C Drive, the folder in which all of your other files and folders are placed. Watch what happens when the folder on the right hand side called "Program Files" is double clicked with the left hand mouse button. We get this:
The address bar now says C:\Program Files. This means that there is a folder called Program Files, and this folder is on the C Drive. On the right hand side is a list of all the folders and files in the "Program Files" folder.
Now that you know how the Windows Explorer works, we'll now create our new folder.
<--Back One Page Move on to the Next Part--> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
How to Create a New Folder in Windows
XP
Following along from the last lesson, we'll now create a new folder using the Windows Explorer. So do the following:
Click once with your Left mouse button on the letter C in the left hand pane of the Windows Explorer On the menu bar across the top that has File, Edit, View, Go, Click the File option once with your Left mouse button
From the menu that drops down, move your mouse pointer to New A sub menu appears
Click the word "Folder" once with your left Mouse button
A New folder will be created on your C Drive. The new folder will appear right at the bottom of all of your other folders and files, under the last one. So you might have to scroll across to see it. You can tell it's your new folder because it says, quite helpfully, "New Folder".
When you clicked "Folder", a new folder was created. But it appears right at the end of your list folders and files, in the right-hand pane of Windows Explorer. That's why you might need to scroll down or across in order to see it. But it will look like the one in the picture below:
The words "New Folder" will be highlighted. It's highlighted so that you can rename it. After all, "New
Folder" is not very descriptive. So go ahead and type in a new name for your folder. Type "wpProjects". As in the image below:
If nothing happens when you try to type a new name for your folder, do the following: Click on your new folder, but click on the folder with your right hand mouse button A menu appears
From the menu, click once with your Left mouse button on the word Rename Type a new name for your folder
You have now created a new folder in the root folder of your C Drive. You can use this same technique to create a new folder inside any of the folders on your C Drive. If you make a mistake and decide you don't want this new folder, you can always choose the Delete options from the menu above, instead of Rename. But one more thing to notice about the Windows Explorer. In the left hand side, you see a lot of plus signs in a square box.
Clicking one of these plus signs will expand your selection. The image on the left below show a plus sign before it is clicked, and on the right afterwards.
The plus sign turns into a minus sign. But the plus sign indicates that there are more folders inside the one that has the plus sign. When you click the plus sign, it will expand to show you all the folders inside a main folder. You can click on any of these folders to see what is inside it.
As for the files inside the folders - try double clicking on one and see what happens. Don't worry: you won't do any harm!
What we're going to do now is to move that new folder we just created, and put it inside our "My Documents" folder. We'll start that in the next part.
<--Back One Page Move on to the Next Part--> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
Windows XP Tutorials: Moving Folders on
your Hard Drive
Drag and Drop Moving
The easiest way to move one folder to another folder is to use drag and drop. And the easiest way to explain drag and drop is by doing it!
To drag the new folder you created earlier and drop it inside your "My Documents" folder, do the following: Click on your new folder once with the left hand mouse button
The folder will be highlighted
Keep you left hand mouse button held down
Move your mouse around the screen. You should see a faint outline of the folder moving with your mouse
Now move the folder over the top of the folder called "My Documents" (Still with your Left mouse button held down!)
The My Documents folder will be highlight as well
Once your My Documents folder is highlighted, let go of your left hand mouse button The new folder will disappear. It has been moved to My Documents
In the image below, a folder called "MyWPProjects" is being dragged to the My Documents folder on the C Drive.
Cut and Paste Moving
If all that was a bit tricky, you can use Cut and Paste to move your folder instead. To cut and paste one folder inside another, do the following:
Click on the folder you want to move (One click, left hand button), in our case "My WP Projects" From the File, Edit, View, Go menu bar in Windows Explorer click "Edit"
The folder you selected will appear fainter
Now, Double Click the folder you want to move your new folder into, or select one from the list on the left hand side. In our case that's the "My Documents" folder. So Click the "My Documents" folder Once in the "My Documents" folder, From the File, Edit, View, Go menu bar in Windows Explorer click Edit
From the menu that drops down, click Paste
Your folder will be pasted from your root folder on the C drive into your My Documents folder
Instead of cutting the folder and pasting, you can just Copy the folder instead. To copy the folder instead of cutting, follow the steps outlined above, but when the menus drop down select "Copy". Then select "Paste" after you have double clicked on the My Documents folders.
Everything we've said above about folders also applies to files. In other words, you can rename a file like you did above, you can copy a file, move it with drag and drop or cut and paste, and you can even create a file with Windows Explorer. Just click on File. From the sub menu select New. You'll see a list of software packages that you can create new files for.
In the next lesson, we'll look at how to copy files from a CD Rom to your hard drive.
<--Back One Page Move on to the Next Part--> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
Copying from a CD to a Hard Drive in
Windows XP
In this lesson, you'll see how to copy the files from a CD over to your own hard drive. Files load a lot quicker when they are on your own computer comapred to a CD. And you won't have to keep inserting the CD every time you need something from it.
The folder we will be copying is called CD Rom Contents. Inside this folder there are more folders and files that are needed for the courses. When we copy the "CD Rom Contents" folder we will automatically copy all the folders inside this one. In other word, copy one folder and you copy everything inside it.
To copy the contents of a CD Rom to your own hard drive, then, do the following: Insert the CD into your CD Rom drive
Start Windows Explorer if you haven't already (see here for how to do this: Windows Explorer Lessons.)
In the left hand pane, Click on the Drive letter for your CD Rom (It will probably be "D")
In the right hand pane of Windows Explorer, you should see the name of a folder or folders (In our case, the folder is called CD Rom Contents.)
In the Image above, the CD Rom Drive letter is D. Clicking on the Drive letter displays the contents of the Drive in the right hand pane. The folder CD Rom Contents is displayed.
Click once with the left hand mouse button on the folder "CD Rom Contents" The folder is selected
From the menu bar at the top of Windows Explorer, click on Edit (once, left hand mouse button) From the drop down menu, click "Copy" with your left mouse button
In the left hand pane of Windows Explorer, Click on your hard drive letter, which will probably be C (click the letter C once with your left mouse button)
When the folders and files from your hard drive are displayed in the right hand pane of the Windows Explorer, click on Edit from the menu bar
From the drop down menu, click on "Paste" (once with the left mouse button) The files will be copied from your CD Rom drive to your Hard drive
To check that all the folders have been copied over correctly, double click the "CD Rom Contents" folder on your hard drive.
And that's it. Quite easy, once you get the hang of it! You can use the same method to transfer files from a floppy disk in the Floppy Drive (which is the A drive) to your hard drive.
We'll now move on to finding files and folders that have gone missing.
<--Back One Page Move on to the Next Part--> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
Finding Files in Windows XP
Sometimes, you will have created a file or a folder and just can't remember where it is. If you have a very big hard drive, there are a lot of places to look for a single file. You may never find it, even with the help of Windows Explorer. One thing you can do to track down a missing file or folder is to use the Windows XP Search tool. Here's how to use it.
Click your Start button in the bottom left corner of your Desktop
From the menu that pops up, locate the Search item (in the blue section on the right, at the bottom)
Click on Search
When you click on Search, you'll get the following window popping up.
(If you see an animated dog, and it's annoying you, you can turn it off by clicking it with the right mouse button. Then click "turn off animated character".)
Under "What do you want to search for" click the option "All files and folders". You should see the following:
You are given a number of different option to conduct your search. Click inside the top text box, under "All or part of the file name". Enter the name of the file, then click the Search button. (Just enter a few lettters of the file name, if you can't remeber exactly what it's called.) Windows XP will start the search, and you'll see something like this:
In the image above we're searching for a file called "wp projects". If XP finds any files or folders with your search term in it, it will display them in the window to the right. In the image below XP has found two folders with our search term in the name.
Even though we typed all our letters in lowercase, the folders found have capital letters in them. In others words, the search is not case sensitive.
Notice in the picture that under the heading "In Folder" it says "C" and "My Documents". These are the two place where the folders are. So we have a folder called "My WP Projects" in the "My Documents" folder of the hard drive, and we also have one called wpProjects. This one is in the main C:\ root folder.
You can open any of the files or folders found simply by double clicking on them. But double click a file or folder under the "Name" heading of the Window, and not the "In Folder" heading.
Finally, to get rid of the Search Window, click the red X in the top right corner of the box.
The last part of Computing for Beginners is a section without which no beginners guide would be complete - Wallpapers and Screensavers!
<--Back One PageMove on to the Next Part--> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
How to change your Windows XP Desktop
Wallpaper
Wallpapers are images that appear in the background on your Desktop, behind all your icons. To change your Desktop wallpaper, do the following:
Click anywhere on the Desktop that is not an icon, but click once with your right hand mouse button A menu pops up. The one below
Click on Properties, once with your Left mouse button The following dialogue box pops up
This is the Display Properties dialogue box. As you can see, there are tab strips for Themes, Desktop, Screensaver, Appearance, and Settings. Click on the Background tab strip and the dialogue box will change to this one:
There is a list of wallpapers we can use. Click on one, and you get a preview of what it will look like. Scroll down to see more wallpapers. If you're satisfied, click the OK button to set your wallpaper.
You can use your own images. You are not limited to the ones on the list. If you have an image somewhere on your computer, and you want to use that instead of the ones on the list, you can click the Browse button, in the image above. Doing so will bring up the Browse Dialogue box:
In the image above, no background files are showing. You can click one of the folders on the left to search for a picture, or use the "Look In" drop down box at the top. When some background image are showing,
click on one to select it. The name of the file you have selected will then appear in the File name text box. Click the "Open" button to return to the Display Properties dialogue box. A preview of your image will be displayed. If you're happy with your selection, click the "Apply" button then OK. Your desktop will change to your selected image.
In the next part, we'll take a look at Screensavers.
<--Back One Page Move on to the Next Part--> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
Setting a Screen Saver in Windows XP
A Screen Saver is something that kicks in when your computer has been idle for a set period of time. They are usually some form of animation, or moving imagery.
To pick a Screen Saver for your own computer, select the Screen Saver tab strip from the Display
Properties dialogue box by clicking on the word "Screen Saver" once with your left mouse button. It looks like this:
Click the little black down-pointing arrow to see a list of available Screen Savers. This one is set to the Windows XP Screen Saver.
You can see that it also says "Wait 10minutes". This means that the Screen Saver will kick in if the mouse has not been moved for 10minutes. You can change this figure. The values go from 1 minute to 60
minutes. When you're happy, click Apply then OK. But play about with the settings on the Screen Saver tab strip. The Energy saving features of the monitor section is not available for all computer monitors, so you may or may not have the part available to you.
wide variety of wallpapers and Screen Savers that you can use to liven up your own computer. But be careful of files sent to you by email that pretend to be a Screen Saver (Check for a file that ends in .SCR). There is a good change it will be a computer virus! If the file has been sent to you from somebody you don't know - don't open the attachment. Just delete the whole email.
In the next section, we'll take a look at how to configure a new email account, and email things in general.
<--Back One Page Move on to the Next Section--> <--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page
How to Zip Files with WinZip
UnZipp Files
Zip a file you want to send to somebody else Unzip a file that has been sent to you
If you have one really big file, or lots of small files, it's better to squash them down in size.You do the squashing with a zipping programme. The most popular is called WinZip. It's so popular that you may even have it on your computer already. So popular that the Word spellchecker doesn't even give it a red wiggly line when you type it out!
To check if it's on your machine, click the Start button in the bottom left of your computer screen with the left mouse button. When the menu pops up, look for WinZip at the top. (But DON'T click it! You don't need to open the software up.)
As you can see, this computer has WinZip installed. If you can't see it on the Start menu, click on All Programs, and look for it there - again, don't open it!
If you don't have it, you can get it from the CD Rom of practically any computer magazine at your
newsagents. Or download a free trial version from the internet. Just type WinZip into any search engine.
Zip a file you want to send to somebody else
When you want to send somebody else a big file (or more than one file), you can zip them up. First, you need to locate the file you want to send. So, do this:
Double click the My Computer icon on your desktop Double click the icon for your Hard Drive (probably C:\) Navigate to the place where your file is
Click on the file you want to zip with your Right mouse button, and a menu will appear Look for the WinZip item on the menu
From the sub menu, choose Add to ...
You may then get a box popping up asking you whether you agree or disagree. Click I agree, and Winzip goes to work. Your file will be zipped up:
Our file has now been zipped up. Note that it has the same name as the original file. If you want to zip an entire folder, then do exactly the same as above.
Unzip a file that has been sent to you
To unzip a file that has been sent to you, or that you have downloaded from the internet, perhaps, do the following:
Double click the icon for your Hard Drive (probably C:\) Navigate to the place where you downloaded the Zipped file Locate the file you want to unzip
Click on the zipped file with your right mouse button A menu pops up
The easiest way to do it is to select the “Extract to . . . ” option, as in the image below
Click the option with your left mouse button, and WinZip unpacks the file for you.
It's quite easy, once you get the hang of it. And it could save you a small amount of money in internet telephone bills!
<--Back to the Beginner's Computing Contents Page View all our Home Study Computer Courses
The Windows 7 Desktop
When your computer starts for the first time, what you see is called the Desktop. It will look something like this:
The Desktop is split into two areas. The strip at the bottom, with the clock to the right and the round Start button to the left, is called the Taskbar. We explore this area in a different section (the Taskbar). But here's a closer look at it:
The Taskbar above is from Windows 7. Windows Vista users will see the round Start button on the left, but will have smaller icon just to the right of it. You'll still have the clock on the right hand side, though.
The rest of the Desktop is the space where all your programmes will appear when you start them up. This space contains a default background wallpaper, but it can also contain shortcuts to programmes,
documents and folder.
You can change the default background wallpaper, and we'll do that next.
How to Change you Desktop Wallpaper >> << Back to the Windows 7 Tutorials
Desktop Backgrounds and Wallpapers
Windows 7 lets you easily change the image you see on your desktop. This is called the Desktop background, or Desktop wallpaper.
To chage your Desktop Wallpaper, click anywhere on the desktop with your right mouse button, and you should see a menu appear:
One of the items on the menu allows you to personalize your desktop screen. So click on Personalize with your left mouse button to see a window appear. This one:
The main area in the screen above let's you select a Theme from the available list. A Theme sets not only your desktop background, but also a screensaver, the colour of windows, sounds, and mouse pointers. And all that with just one click!
If you just want to set background wallpaper, however, select Desktop Background from the bottom left. The default is called Harmony.
When you click on Desktop Background you should see something like the following:
You can select a picture from the ones available by clicking on it with your left mouse button. Your desktop background will then change. To make the change permanent, click the Save Changes button at the bottom.
If you have a picture of your own, you can use this instead of the ones built-in to Windows 7. To set your own picture, click the dropdown list at the top, where it says Windows Desktop Background:
Here, we have moved to the Pictures Library folder to see what images are available. Another option is to click the Browse button. When you do, you'll see a dialogue box appear:
Browse to the folder where your images are and click OK. We have a folder called York with some images in it, so we've selected that one.
Select the image you want to appear on your desktop from those available. If you would like a slideshow of all the images in the folder, then click the Select All button. If you click the Select All button then the
dropdown list at the bottom becomes available:
This list lets you choose how often each image in the slideshow is displayed before moving on to the next one. The default is 10 seconds.
Select each one in turn and watch what happens.
When you are happy with your choices, click Save Changes. You will then be taken back to the first screen:
Windows Colour
Another interesting area to play around is the Windows Colour area, circled in red in the image above. Click the link to see the following screen:
Things like the start menu, the taskbar, and the areas around programmes can all have the same colour scheme. The default is called Sky. Click one of the other colours above and watch what happens to your Taskbar at the bottom. Click the round Start button on the left of the Taskbar and you'll see that its colour too has changed. Uncheck the box that says "Enable transparency" and you'll see a deeper colour for the one you have chosen.
If you don't like the colours available, click the arrow to the left of Show Color Mixer. Then play around with the controls. To get back to the default colours, just click the colour square in the top left of the screen, which is Sky.
In the next section, we'll have a closer look at the Taskbar in Windows 7.
The Windows 7 Taskbar >> << Back to the Windows 7 Tutorials
The Windows 7 Taskbar
The taskbar is the thin strip that runs across the bottom of your screen. It is split into a number of different areas: a round Start button, Quick Launch icons, a notification area, and a clock. All other areas are the Taskbar itself. The image below shows where the different areas are:
The Start button is explained in a section all of its own, as it's probably the most important area of the Taskbar. Click here to go the Start button page:
The Windows 7 Start button
There is one more area on the Taskbar, and it's easily overlooked - the Show Desktop button. In the images above, you can just see a narrow rectangle to the right of the clock:
Click this button to minimize all open programmes and reveal the desktop.
Quick Launch Icons
In the main image above, take a look at the three big icons to the right of the round Start button. These are quick launch icons, meaning you can quickly launch any of the programmes you see there. When you hold your mouse over one of the icons, you'll see a small popup rectangle that shows you a preview of any open windows. In the image below, we're holding our mouse over the Firefox icon. (Firefox is a web browser used to display internet pages. It's Internet Explorer's main competitor.)
Click on the preview window and it opens the programme up in full screen.
There are several ways to add new programmes to the Quick Launch area, but Windows 7 makes it a lot easier. Open up a programme using the Start menu. When it's open, use the right mouse button to click its icon in the Taskbar. A new menu appears:
In the image above, we have Microsoft Excel open. Right-clicking its icon in the Taskbar gave us the above menu. Once "Pin this program to the taskbar" is clicked with the left mouse button, it will appear
permanently in the Quick Launch arrear. If you want to get rid of any Quick Launch programmes, the item on the menu will say "Unpin this program from the taskbar" when you right-click.
You can also use the Start menu to add programmes to the Quick Launch area. Again, right-click the programme you want to add. From the menu, select "Pin to Taskbar". In the image below, we're adding Notepad as a Quick Launch icon:
The result is a new icon in the Quick Launch area:
Notification Area
(NOTE: The Notification area saw a big change from Windows Vista to Windows 7. You should recognise a lot of the icons below, however, if you have Vista.)
The Notification area, formally called the System Tray, is the area of the Taskbar where you can view programmes and tasks that are running in the background, as well as view important messages about updating your computer. (Although the clock is considered part of the Notification area, we'll look at this separately.)
In the image below, the Notification area shows three icons:
The first one, the white arrow, is for hidden icons. Click the white arrow to see which icons have been hidden:
Probably the only one of the four icons above that you'll have is the speaker icon. This sets the volume for your speakers. If yours is too low, click the speaker icon to see a slider that you can move up and down:
The second of the three icons in the Notification area is a white flag. This flag alerts you to issues that need to be taken care of. Click the flag icon to see if there are any problems:
As you can see, Windows 7 is telling us that there is 1 message, and that it's to do with Windows Defender. You can click on the "1 message" heading at the top, or on the message itself. You can also open the "Action Center" from here.
The third icon that appears in the Notification area (on our computer, anyway) is a Network icon. This tells us that we have an internet connection, and there are no problems. If the internet access is down, there will be a red X through this icon:
The red X will disappear when the problem with the internet is solved.
In the next part, we'll take a look at the Windows 7 clock, and the date and time.
The Date and Time in Windows 7 >> << Back to the Windows 7 Tutorials
The Date and Time in Windows 7
The default clock shows you the date as well as the time:
You can change how Windows 7 displays these. You can even add clocks for other time zones. Click on the clock to see a new popup window:
As you can see, as well as a clock you get a calendar. Click the arrows to display new months:
To change the settings for the clock, the date, and the time, click on "Change date and time settings". You should see the following dialogue box appear:
If your clock is showing the wrong time, or the wrong date, click the button "Change date and time ..." When you do, you'll see the following dialogue box appear:
To change the date, click the black left and right arrows to move to the correct month. Then select the date you want. To change the time, click the up and down arrows below the clock. Click OK when the date and time are correct.
If you want to play around with the way Windows 7 displays the Date and Time, click on "Change calendar settings" then play around with the settings. You may need to restart before the changes take effect.
If you want more than one time zone to appear, click the" Additional Clocks" tab at the top of the Date and Time dialogue box:
Click the box to the left of "Show this clock" and the drop down list will become available. Select a time zone from the list. Type a name for you clock in the box below the heading "Enter display name". Then click OK. Click OK again to get rid of the Date and Time dialogue box. Now click the clock area again in the bottom right of the taskbar. You should see your new clock appear:
In the next lesson, we'll have a look at adding toolbars to the Windows 7 taskbar.
Windows 7 Toolbars >> << Back to the Windows 7 Tutorials
Toolbars in Windows 7
You can add Toolbars to your taskbar area. A toolbar is a list of shortcuts to favourite areas of your computers. Right click the Taskbar to see the following menu:
Select Toolbars to see the built-in Windows 7 ones:
As you can see, there are entries for Address, Links, PowerDVD 8, Desktop, and New toolbar. (Unless you have the PowerDVD programme on your computer, you won't see this one.)
To see what they do, click the first one, Address. You should see the following appear in your Taskbar:
This is similar to the Search bar on the Start menu. You can type a web site address in the text box (but see the warning below, before you do). When you click the blue double arrows it will launch your browser and navigate to the website you typed. Or just navigate to areas on your computer. Click the black down arrow to see some shortcuts:
Click on a shortcut to launch that particular programme or dialogue box. The entry for "notepad.exe" in the image above is there because we typed it in the Address bar. When we pressed the enter key on the keyboard, this programme was then launched. If you know the name of a programme on your computer, type it in the address bar to open it up.
WARNING: Deleting Items From the Address Bar
When you type a web address in the Address Bar above, it will add it there on a permanent basis. If you were to close down the computer and opening it again, the address will still be there. This could be quite problematic, if the web address is a sensitive one.
Sadly, Microsoft haven't provided an easy way to delete single URLs from the Address bar above. Doing so means opening and editing the Windows registry, which is beyond the scope of this artcile.
However, you can clear all the entries in the Address bar quite easily.
Click the Start button. From the Start menu, select Computer from the list on the right hand side. You should see an Explorer window open. The Address bar is at the top, and will say Computer:
DON'T left click inside this Address bar, but right click. (It's easier if you simply right click the word "Computer".) You're looking for a short menu to appear. It will have four items on it: Copy Address, Copy Address as Text, Edit Address, and Delete History. This one:
Select Delete History. It should clear the items in your Address bar. Not only the Address bar at the top, but also the one in the Toolbar at the bottom of the screen.
The Links Toolbar Item
The Links item on the menu refers to the Favourites Bar folder that appears in Internet Explorer. These are shortcuts to websites you've added. The Links toolbar looks like this, when you add it to the Taskbar:
But you can also right-click the word "Links". A new menu appears:
Select "Open Folder" to see the shortcuts:
You can add your own shortcut items to the favourites bar folder. In the image below, we've right-clicked on the Documents folder under Libraries, and selected Copy:
We've then right-clicked inside of the favourites bar folder and selected Paste Shortcut:
Creating New Toolbars
At the bottom of the toolbar menu there is an item for "New toolbar". This allows you to create a toolbar of your very own:
When you click on "New toolbar", you'll see an Explorer window open. Select a folder to add to your new toolbar. In the image below, we've selected the Pictures folder from the list on the left:
The Folder text box at the bottom then says "Pictures". Click the Select Folder button. Your chosen folder will appear on your Taskbar at the bottom of your screen:
You now have a handy shortcut to any images that you save in the Pictures folder. In the next lesson, we'll take a look at the Start button.
The Windows 7 Start Button --> << Back to the Windows 7 Tutorials
The Windows 7 Start Button
Arguably, the most important part of the Taskbar is the Start button. The Start button is where a lot of the action takes place in Windows 7. The Start button can be found in the bottom left of your screen, and looks like this:
Click the Start button once with your left mouse button and you'll see a menu appear:
The Start menu is split into two different areas. The white area on the left is for software programmes that you have installed on your computer. But these are the programmes you have recently used. If an entry has a black arrow it means that documents can be opened by clicking the shortcut. For example, here's what happens when we click our Microsoft Word entry above:
We have four recently opened documents that we can click on. These will then open in Word.
Notice the small pin icon to the right of the Recent list. Clicking the icon will pin that document to the Word shortcut menu. This is useful if you open one particular document all the time.
You can see more software by clicking on "All Programs" at the bottom of the Start menu. The area on the left will be replaced by a list of programmes available to you:
Software can be launched by clicking on an icon with the left mouse button. However, the yellow folders will expand when you click on them, revealing more options available to you. For example, clicking on the yellow Games folder will reveal the following:
To start the programme, click once with your left mouse button on your chosen item. To return to the first list of programmes, click < Back at the bottom of the menu.
The other area is the darker strip on the right. These are shortcuts for locations on your computer. We'll explore these options in later sections, especially the Control Panel and Computer options. But one more thing to notice in the dark area on the right of the Start menu is the Shut down button. Clicking this will obviously shut down your computer, but click the arrow to the right of the Shutdown button to see the following options:
As you can see, there are five options on the menu. The first is useful if you share your computer with others, and have set up multiple accounts. Click Switch user to see other account names. A user can then enter login details without the need to shutdown the computer and start again. The Log Off option logs you out of your account. Again, the computer doesn't shut down. Instead, you'll see a screen where you or others can log back in again. The Lock option prevents others from using the computer until you enter your password again. (You'll learn how to set up multiple users accounts in a later section.)
The final two options are Restart and Sleep. The Restart is self-explanatory. But the Sleep option is useful if you're not going to be using the computer for a while. It powers down the hardware, saving you energy.
Start Menu Picture
If you look at the top of your Start menu you'll see a picture, which is a flower in the images above. You can change this. Click the picture with your left mouse button and a new screen will open. This one:
Click the link for Change you picture. You'll then see others images you can use:
Select a picture from the ones available, or click the Browse for more pictures link. When you're happy with your selection, click the Change Picture button at the bottom.
Searching from the Start menu
If you have forgotten where you stored or downloaded a particular file, simply type its name (or just part of its name) in the search box. You should then see search options appear:
In the image above, we're searching for anything related to the search term "york". Window 7 has found 15 documents, 3 pictures, and 215 files. In the files section, you can see little envelope icons, meaning
Windows has searched all our emails as well.
If the file you're looking for is not there, then click where it says "See more results".
In the next part, you'll learn how to set up a new user account, so that others can share the computer.
User Accounts in Windows 7 >> << Back to the Windows 7 Tutorials
User Accounts in Windows 7
If you have more than one person using the computer it makes sense to create a user account for them. That way, they can have their own backgrounds, themes, internet settings, etc.
To create a new account, click your picture on the Start menu:
This will open up the following screen:
There are already two accounts set up here. One is a Guest account, and the other is an Administrator account. If an account is set up as Administrator then you have full control of what happens on the
computer. The other type of account is called a Standard account. This is the type of account you should set up for other people, as it means they don't have full control on the computer. For example, if they wanted to install software, they would have to type in an Administrator's password to do so. Which means they'd have to ask you. This makes your computer more secure than it otherwise would be. (Only
Administrators can set up accounts for others.)
So to create a new account, click on the link "Create a new account", which is circled in red above. You'll then see a new screen:
Type a name for the account in the text box. (We'd just called ours User2.) Keep it on the default option, Standard user. Then click the Create Account button at the bottom. You'll then be taken back to the account page:
As you can see the new account is created, along with a random picture (a balloon, in this case). The Owner account will still be selected, however. Click on your new account and you'll be able to change some settings for it:
"Change the account type" means setting it to either a Standard user or an Administrator. But you can create a password for this account by clicking the link. You'll then be taken to the password screen:
You can ignore all the dire warnings if this is a new account, as they won't have any encrypted files, certificates or website password. But type a password, and a password hint. Then click the button at the bottom "Create Password". You'll then be taken back to the account options.
In the next part we'll take a look at Parental Controls.
Parental Controls in Windows 7 >> << Back to the Windows 7 Tutorials
Parental Controls in Windows 7
In the last lesson, you'll learnt how to set up a new user account. However, If the user account you're creating is for a child, you may want to set some Parental Control. We'll do that now.
Make sure you are logged in to your own account, and that you are Administrator. (if you're not sure what this means, go back to the last lesson.)
To get to the accounts page, click your picture on the Start menu:
When the User Accounts screen appears, click the link in the bottom left that says "Parental Controls", circled in red in the image below:
Click on the account you'd like to change, which is User2 in our case. When you click on account, you'll see the following screen:
Select the option at the top for "On, enforce current settings". The three options below that will then become available. The first option, Time limits allows you to set when that user can use the computer. Click the link to see the settings below:
Here, we've blocked access for the user from half past eight at night till 9 in the morning. Click the OK button (not shown above) to get back to the Parental Control options.
The Games options let's you control which types of games can be played by the user. Click the Games link to see this screen:
If you don't want this user playing any games at all, select the No option. The rest of the options will then be greyed out.
The first thing we've done is to block games that haven't set a rating. (These types of games tend to be from non-mainstream developers.) We've also selected the option for Parental Guidance, which has a PG certificate in the UK. Any game that has a higher category will be blocked. We've also selected all six of the options at the bottom. Click OK to confirm your choices.
The other option you have as a parent is to block or allow specific games:
These are games that are installed on the computer for all users. Click the link and you'll see a list of the games you can block or allow.
Click OK on the Games section to go back to the Parental Controls section.
If you want to block certain programmes, click the link that says "Allow and block specific programmes":
The list is quite long and bewildering! In fact, it so confusing you may be better off just leaving this altogether, unless you're an expert user.
When you're done with these options, click the OK button to get back to the Parental Control option. Click OK on this screen and you're done - your new account is ready to be used.
To see if it works, click the Start button in the bottom left of your screen. From the Start menu, select Shut Down > Switch User:
You'll then see the Windows 7 login screen. You new user account should be there, along with your administrator one. Click the new user account to see it in action.
If you want to set up another user account, log in as Administrator and start the whole process all over again.
In the next lesson, you'll learn about the basics of your Hard Drive.
Hard Drive Basics --> << Back to the Windows 7 Tutorials
Hard Drive Basics
The Hard Drive on your computer is where all your files are stored. Not only that, it's the place where the Operating System itself is installed. A hard drive is a physical thing inside of your computer. If you were to take it apart, you'd see one of more disks (called platters), one on top of the other. In a modern hard drive, however, there's usually just one platter. The disks are magnetised and can be written to and read from. The writing and reading is done by an arm which moves across as the disk is spun round. If you were buying a new hard drive, you'd see a figure like 7,200 rpm (revolutions per minute) or 10, 000 rpm. This refers to the speed at which the disks spin. The higher the spin speed the faster the hard disk will be. Not all hard drives use the spinning disk and arm approach, however. A modern laptop or Netbook may use something called a Solid State Drive (SSD). These have no moving parts, and are considered faster than a hard drive. However, the space available on a SSD is a lot less than on a hard disk, but this could change over the next few years or so. At the moment, SSDs are lot more expensive than hard drives. But again, this could change.
Whichever drive you have, hard or Solid State, just bear in mind that a drive is a physical thing that you use to store files, install programmes and Operating Systems.
The size of a hard drive does not refer to its height or width but to how many Gigabytes of data can be stored on it. If you're wondering how big a Gigabyte is then think of a single byte as holding, say, one letter of the alphabet. A kilobyte can then hold a thousand letters (actually, 1024 letters as there's just over a thousand bytes in a kilobyte). A Megabyte could hold 1, 000, 000 letters (1, 048, 576 bytes), and a Gigabyte 1000, 000, 000 letters (1 073, 741, 824)!
But those numbers are fairly meaningless in modern-day computing. Think of how big a picture is that you take on a camera phone. A medium sized image will be about 250 kilobytes. So you could get four if the memory held only a megabyte and about 4 000 if you had a Gigabyte of memory on your phone.
You can check to see how big the hard drive is on your own computer. To do that, start up Windows Explorer by clicking its icon just to the right of the Start button:
The default location is inside of the Libraries folder. Click the Computer section instead:
This area should display a graphic of how much space you have left on your hard drive, and how big it is. In the image above, this computer has a hard drive size of 465 Gigabytes (GB), and there is still a roomy 410 Gigabytes of space free to use. The image also shows other drives attached to the computer, a DVD writer in this case. If you have a USB memory stick, it should show up here when it is inserted.
Note also that the drive has the name Local Drive (C:), or just the C Drive for short. This C Drive is also known as the root drive, as everything is stored on it. Think of it as the master folder that holds all other folders and files inside of it.
Now click on the C drive to highlight it. You should see some extra option become available at the top:
The one we're interested in is the Properties option. Click on this and you'll see a dialogue box appear. This one:
Again, we see a graphic of how big the hard drive is, and how much space is free. The graphic this time is a pie chart.
One thing to note here is that the size of the hard drive is 465 Gigabytes, even though it was marketed as having a 500 gigabyte hard drive. So why the discrepancy? It's because the manufactures uses a small "g" for gigabytes, and they use 1 gigabyte to mean a billion bytes. However, a true Gigabytes has a capital "G" and means 1 073, 741, 824 bytes. So a 500 Gigabyte hard drive actually has 35 GB missing!
Hard Disk Cleanup
If your hard drive is showing a lot of used space, and not much free space, then click the button "Disk Cleanup" to see if you can rescue some space. You should then see a small dialogue box like this one:
Disk Cleanup is telling us that it has found 90.0 Megabytes of files that it can safely delete. These are the ones with check marks. You can check any of the other boxes, as well. For example, the image above shows that the Recycle Bin has 1.97 GB of files in it. If you're sure you haven't accidentally sent an important file to the Recycle Bin then you can safely delete these files as well. In which case, give it a check mark by clicking inside of its box. The same applies to all the others on the list (scroll down to see more). Click on an item to see a description of just what each item on the list does.
You can also click the button at the bottom "Clean up system files". All this does is to add even more areas to the list. But you need to delete the system files with care. If you're not sure about an area, leave it unchecked.
When you're happy with your selections, click the OK button to free up disk space. Windows will then go to work erasing the files and documents you have selected. When it's done, it will return to the Disk Cleanup screen:
In the image above, we're freed up 2 Gigabytes of space.
Another area worth exploring in the image above is Tools. Click this tab at the top to see the following screen:
computer. Otherwise, you can leave it alone. The Defragmentation option is really a matter of choice. If you have a big hard drive with lots of space, there's little point in defragmenting. It's supposed to speed up file access times, but is really only relevant on older hard drives that don't have much free space. The Backup option is worth exploring. When you click the button, Windows will search your computer for other drives, like DVD writers. If it finds one, it will ask you to use that to backup your files. More expensive
versions of Windows 7 will have better options for back up, like a network drive. You should always back up your important files and documents, but cheaper versions of Windows 7 are not that much help - you could easily copy your files to a DVD yourself, without Window's help!
Click OK on the dialogue boxes to get rid of them. You'll meet Windows Explorer again in the next section, when we explore the important subject of file extensions.
File Extensions and Windows 7 --> << Back to the Windows 7 Tutorials
File Extensions
In the next section, we discuss how to work with images. Before we get to that, it's a good idea to check to make sure you have files extensions switched on.
A file extension is the dot and letters at the end of a file name. For example, a picture you take on your camera phone will probably end in .JPG or .JPEG. The letters stand for Joint Photographic
Experts Group, and tell Windows and other programmes that it is an image file. Other file extensions for images are GIF, PNG, and TIFF. If you have file extensions switched off you won't be able to tell what sort of image you have. Not only that, somebody could send you an attachment to an email that looks like this:
picture_file.jpg
If you just saw the JPG ending, you might open the file, thinking it was an image. However, the real file ending could be this:
picture_file.jpg.exe
But you won't see the .exe at the end if you have file extensions switched off. The exe means it's an executable programme that will be installed onto your computer. If you opened the file, the programme would install automatically. And it certainly won't have your best interests at heart!
In the image below, we have four files showing, but no file extensions, so we could be vunerable to this sort of attack:
To switch on file extensions, start Windows Explorer by clicking its icon just to the right of the start button:
The default for Windows Explorer is to hide the menu bars. To view them, press the left ALT key on your keyboard (the one to the left of the space bar). You should see this at the top of Windows Explorer:
If you still can't see the menu bars click Organize > Layout > Menu Bar:
Now that you have a menu bar, click the Tools item. From the Tools menu, select Folder Options:
Click on the View tab at the top to see the following:
As, you can see there is a check mark in the box next to this entry. If yours is the same, click the box to remove the check mark. Then click the Apply button at the bottom. Click OK to get rid of the dialogue box. You should now be able to see the extensions on the end of file names:
Our four images are now showing the JPG file extension.
Now that you can see file extensions, we'll make a start on working with images in Windows 7.
<< Back to the Windows 7 Tutorials View all our Home Study Computer Courses
Copy and Paste Pictures to a New Folder
In this tutorial, you will learn how to copy and paste pictures to a new folder. Once you've done that, you will learn how to add information to each image, so that they can be located and referenced more easily. Let's start by creating a new folder.
Start the Windows 7 Explorer by clicking its icon to the right of the Start button:
When Windows Explorer starts, click on Pictures in the Libraries section of the Navigation pane (If you can't see the Navigation pane, click the Organize button at the top. Then select Layout > Navigation pane):
On the right, you'll see folders that are in this library. Windows 7 has some Sample Pictures in this library. But you can add your own, and create folders for them.
