Windows Vista: The Missing Manual

Chapter 3. Searching and Organizing 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 that 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 was one of the primary design goals of Windows Vista—and of this chapter. The following pages cover Vista Search, 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.

Tip

To create a new folder to hold your icons, right-click where you want the folder to appear (on the desktop, or in any desktop window except Computer), and choose New→Folder from the shortcut menu. The new folder appears with its temporary "New Folder" name highlighted. Type a new name for the folder and then press Enter.

UP TO SPEED : Directories vs. Folders

Before Windows took over the universe, folders were called directories, and folders inside them were called subdirectories. Keep that in mind the next time you're reading an old user guide, magazine ...