Windows XP Pro: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

Life with Icons

Both of the navigational schemes described so far in this chapter have only one goal in life: to help you manage your icons. 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 at the top of your keyboard.

• 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 that you don’t go your entire career with a drive named “Local Disk.” Just rename its icon (in the My Computer window) as you would any other. You’re not allowed to rename important system folders like Documents and Settings, Recycle Bin, Windows, WINNT, and System32, however.

In any case, once the renaming rectangle has appeared around the current name, simply type the new name you want, and then press Enter. Feel free to use all the standard text-editing tricks while you’re typing: Press Backspace to fix a typo, press the left and right arrow 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.)

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