Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual

Life with Icons

File Explorer has only one purpose in life: to help you manage the icons of your files, folders, and disks. You could spend your entire workday just mastering the techniques of naming, copying, moving, and deleting these icons—and plenty of people do.

Here’s the crash course.

Renaming Your Icons

To rename a file, folder, printer, or disk icon, you need to open up its “renaming rectangle.” You can do so with any of the following methods:

• Highlight the icon and then press the F2 key.

• Highlight the icon. On the Home tab of the Ribbon, click Rename.

• Click carefully, just once, on a previously highlighted icon’s name.

• Right-click the icon and choose Rename from the shortcut menu.

Tip

You can even rename your hard drive so you don’t go your entire career with a drive named “Local Disk.” Just rename its icon (in the Computer window) as you would any other.

In any case, once the renaming rectangle has appeared, type the new name you want and then press Enter. Use all the standard text-editing tricks: Press Backspace to fix a typo, press the and keys to position the insertion point, and so on. When you’re finished editing the name, press Enter to make it stick. (If another icon in the folder has the same name, Windows beeps and makes you choose another name.)

Tip

If you highlight a bunch ...