Windows 10 May 2019 Update: The Missing Manual

Chapter 3. Organizing & Finding Your Files

Every disk, folder, file, application, printer, and networked computer is represented on your screen by an icon. To avoid spraying your screen with thousands of overlapping icons seething like snakes in a pit, Windows organizes icons into folders, puts those folders into other folders, and so on. This folder-in-a-folder-in-a-folder scheme works beautifully at reducing screen clutter, but it means you’ve got some hunting to do whenever you want to open a particular icon.

Helping you find, navigate, and manage your files, folders, and disks with less stress and greater speed is one of the primary design goals of Windows—and of this chapter. The following pages cover Windows 10’s Search function, plus icon-management life skills like selecting them, renaming them, moving them, copying them, making shortcuts of them, assigning them to keystrokes, deleting them, and burning them to CD or DVD.

The Power of Search

Every computer offers a way to find and open files and programs, saving you a lot of hunting and burrowing through your folders.

And in the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, the Search feature has been thoroughly revamped, cleaned up, and common-sensified.

The most important message is this: Search is not just for finding a file. You should also think of it for these tasks:

• Opening apps. Search is by far the fastest way to open a program. You should use it all the time. The whole thing happens very quickly, and you never have to take ...