Files & Folders
Exercises

Exercise Win2-2: Find and Manage Files

Purpose: to meet the Find utility and to demonstrate that you can manage files and folders

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What you will do:

Use Search to locate files based on the extension Create folders and files Move and rename Do a screen capture print Crop in Paint Backup your files

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Start with:  & have finished Exercise Win2-1.

Look for Files

1. Open an Explorer/Computer window and create on your Class disk a new folder named  bitmaps . Be sure the View in use is Details. Do NOT close the window.
    
2. Open the Start menu and...

    In WinXP select Search. The Search Companion dialog box appears. You will get an Internet Explorer window with the Search pane on the left. The Search button on the toolbar toggles this pane in and out of view. WinXP lets you search for just pictures, or just documents, or all files and folders.

   Check out all of the choices for how to restrict your search.
    
   You may not see the animated dog Rover if the preferences have been changed. At the bottom of the list is a choice to Turn off animated character. The link Change preferences lets you switch to another character in addition to other kinds of preferences.

   In Windows Vista & Win7 the Start menu appears with the Search box at the bottom. Get ready to type in the Search box above the Start button.
   

3. To search for all files with the extension bmp...

   Select to search All files and folders and in the text box All or part of the file name, type  *.bmp (Be careful to type this exactly as written - an asterisk, a period, the letters b m p with no spaces.) In the Look in text box, drop the list and select drive C. Click the Advanced options box and then in the box for Search system folders. There are some bitmap images in the Windows folder that we want to show up in the results.

   In Windows Vista & Win7 type in the Search box, *.bmp  From the Search text box you will automatically be looking in all of the Indexed locations, which includes all of your user folders like Pictures, Documents, and Music.

   

   Special characters for Search: The asterisk * is called a wildcard and stands for any number of characters. A question mark stands in for a single character. So if you search for  ??.bmp , the results could include files with names like ad.bmp and my.bmp but would not show files like forest.bmp or f.bmp because they don't have the right number of letters.
    

4. Start the search process:

   In WinXP, click the button Search Now. As files are found, they are listed for you.  This process can take quite a while if your hard disk is large. The default for WinXP is to show thumbnails for pictures. In Details view you can see a more files at once. You can click the Stop Search button in the left pane once the Windows folder has been searched.

   

   Search results in WinXP -
   with Search Companion (Thumbnails) and without Search Companion (Details)

     In Windows Vista & Win7, press ENTER. The results from the Indexed locations appear very quickly above the Start button if it is a short list. But there are many more files than these! Click at the bottom of the menu on the link See all results. Vista and Win7 work differently at this point.

   A new Search results window appears and gradually displays other files as Search looks in locations that were not indexed, including the Windows folder. (You can stop the search after it finishes with the Windows folder by clicking the button at the right end of the progress bar.)

   

   Search results in Windows Vista-
   Indexed locations at left and All of Computer at right
   (Your results will be different!)

   In Vista, if your results for Indexed locations was a long list, it may have opened up in a new window. To see "all results" is not as simple from here. Click the Advanced Search button at the upper right of the window, which opens the Search pane. Check the box for "include non-indexed, hidden, and system folders" and click on the Search button. Watch the folder names for where Search is looking. Once it has finished with the Windows folder, you can stop the search process by clicking the button . (If the search is taking a long time, you can change the search location to just the Windows folder by navigating through the Locations dialog.)

   In Win7, the new window for See more results still shows only Indexed Locations, but no you can scroll to see all of them.

   

   1. Scroll the folder tree until you can click on the Windows folder. The Contents pane changes to show all the contents of the Windows folder, not just the search results.

   2. Click in the search box at the upper right. A list of recent search terms drops.

   3.  Click on *.bmp. Now Search looks in just the Windows folder for bmp files.
      

      A search can take several minutes. Be patient. The Address Bar in Vista and Win7 acts as a progress bar by turning green from left to right as the search proceeds.
      

5. When the search is finished, scroll the list of found files. What you see in this list will vary. The folder name may be out of sight to the right. Move the scroll bar across the bottom of the window to see the Folder column. You are looking for the files in the Windows folder, not in a subfolder.

   You can do most file management tasks directly from the results window. This is so neat!

6. Change the display to show Large Icons.  This will make it easy to spot the images you will be looking for.

Problem: Filenames do not show the extensions
Most installations of Windows do not show the file name extensions by default.
Solution: In a Computer window,
WinXP: Open the Tools menu and select Folder Options. Click on the View tab. Uncheck the box for Hide extensions. Click on OK and your change will be applied.
Vista & Win7: Click the Organize button, and then Folder and Search Options. Click the View tab. Uncheck the box for Hide extensions. Click on OK and your change will be applied.
 

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Copy Files: Send To

1. Select in the Files Found/Search Results window the following files:
    (or other bmp files if these are not in the list)
   Vista: Blue Lace16.bmp, Prairie Wind.bmp, Soap Bubbles.bmp
   Win7: user.bmp, usertile11.bmp, and usertile16.bmp.
2. Right click on one of the files.
    
3. From the popup menu select Send to and from the menu that cascades from it, select your removable drive. The selected files are copied to the root of the chosen drive (not in any of the folders). With this method, you cannot browse to a folder on the drive. The display does not change to show you the location of your copies!

   

   Problem: No command Send to
         Solution: Copy the files and paste them to your removable drive at the top level, called the root.
   

4. Do NOT close the Search window or Explorer. They need to be open for later steps.

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Create folder, Save As

1. If necessary, switch to Explorer using ALT + TAB. Create a new folder bitmaps on your removable disk and move the three files from the root directory of the Class disk to the new folder. Display the contents of bitmaps in Explorer.
    

2. On the folder tree, rename the folder as BMP. In earlier versions of Windows, you did not get all caps when you typed BMP in all caps!
    
3. Open a file in Paint: 

    Right click on one of the images that you copied in your Class disk and select  Edit . The picture opens in Paint.

   Problem: Image opens in an image viewer like Windows Picture and Fax Viewer or in Windows Photo Gallery.
   Cause: Your double-clicked which selects the default menu item, Preview, or you clicked on Preview in the popup menu.
   Solution:  Close the viewer window and try again.

   Problem: Image opens in another graphics program
   Cause:  Most graphics programs change the file associations when they are installed to open all images in that program.
   Solution: You can try to work with it there, or else close that program and open Paint yourself and then open the file from inside Paint with File > Open.
    

4. Use the Text tool to write your name and   Win2-2  on the picture using a color that contrasts well with the image, Braggadocio or Britannic Bold or another font with large wide letters at a font size that shows well and fits on the image.

   Hint: Click the bottom area of the toolbar to get a transparent background for your text.
    

   Vista & Win7 come with many more fonts than WinXP, but not quite the same ones as each other! Some of the new fonts are primarily for languages that do no use the Latin alphabet that English uses, like Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, and Thai. Such fonts may all look the same for the English alphabet.
    
    

5. Use Save As to save the file under a new name in the BMP folder. -
   like mysoap.bmp  or myuser.bmp
    
   
6.  Check the Page Setup and Print Preview. Make adjustments if necessary to print the image at the upper left of the page at 100% to 300% of normal size, depending on the size of your image.

    
    

7. If all is arranged happily, print.
    
8. Do NOT close Paint.
    

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Refresh; Delete; Cascade; Backup

1. Switch back to Explorer with ALT + TAB. Notice that your file mysoap.bmp or myuser.bmp  (or whatever you chose) is at the bottom of the list. It is not in alphabetical order! Refresh the listing. (Press the F5 key or use View > Refresh from the menu or click the Refresh button .)
    
2. Delete the original of the file you edited, soap Bubbles.bmp or user.bmp, from the folder BMP  on your removable disk. (Don't delete the original on the hard disk!!!)
    
3. Cascade the windows. You should have 3 windows open - Paint, a Computer window showing your removable drive, and a Computer windows showing the search results.

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Screen Capture

You can use a screen capture to show someone later what you saw on your screen. This is handy for many technical support issues and also for proving you made those high scores in your favorite games!

1. Capture an image of the whole desktop with Print Screen.
    
2. Open a new Paint window by starting Paint again. Paste your screen capture.
   WinXP: When asked if you want to enlarge the bitmap, choose No (unless the space will be too small to show even the right pane). This will crop your image for you! This works great for this particular image.
    

3. Crop: You can reduce the size of the file by cropping the image. Use the Select tool to select the part you want to save, then click the Crop button. Be sure to include the top left area, which shows the titles in the title bar.
   

4. Type your name and  Win2-2  at the somewhere on the image. Be sure it is readable. Don't cover anything that will make it clear which window is which.

    

5.  Save the file as win2-2.bmp in the folder win project2.

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Print

1. Check Page Setup and Print Preview. Be sure the image will fit on one page. Make changes if needed.

   Problem: Image is too wide for the paper
   Solution: Try changing the margins. If it is still too wide, either print 1 page, or go back to Paint and select enough of the image, to show the right pane contents and the title bars of the cascaded windows, crop the image or copy and paste into a new document. Check settings for this version.
    

2. Print. Check your printout.
    
3. If all is OK with the printout, close both Paint windows and Find/Search.

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Backup

1.  Copy your files to a folder on your hard disk and/or to a different removable drive.
    
2. Close all of the windows.