Organising files
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Now an important thing to do with your computer is making sure you organize your Files correctly. Very quickly, you can end up with a lot of information in areas that you just cannot find it again. So what we are going to do, is have a look at some simple ways of just organizing Files and Folders within your computer so they are easy to find. So what we are using here. We are using a Mac here but the Windows Explorer works in a very, very similar way. So on here, you will see there is different areas down the side. Now, these first top ones are different sections. So this is the AirDrop, which would mean if I want to send a Folder to somebody else who has got another Mac computer. Dropbox is a Cloud-based system. Screenshots, which is the Folder that is created just for screenshots. The Recents. Now, Recents are all the recent stuff so here, you have got some Files which are the recent video recordings we have literally made for this course so you see them come up here. Applications are all the programs on there and you cannot really do much with these, they are staying as they are but you see, these are all the programs within this computer.
Then there are the other three key areas. One is the Desktop and the Desktop is where you can have all your main Folders and information that you need. So if we just shrink this down now, you see this information here is the Desktop, all these icons on the right-hand side are exactly the same as the ones on the Folder here. So what you do not want to have is loads and loads of stuff on the Desktop so when you look at the screen, there are icons all over it and you cannot work out what is what, so it may well be that here, we have got four regular used PowerPoints down here, what you can do is you can put those into a Folder so that would be quite a simple thing to do. Literally, just attach all these, just make sure you highlight them all, then we can go on the top here and we can create a Folder with those four items in and just call it PowerPoints. So that is now stored. Now, there is already a name on there, so we need to change it so if you come up with an error there, we can just literally come up with it and see to the right, there is a PowerPoint one already so a good way of doing it is maybe saying PowerPoints 2021 so we know that these are all the latest PowerPoints we are working with. So now we have ended up with four icons that have now been made into one.
Now you might not want all this stuff sitting on your Desktop area, so you can then archive some of that if you want. You can drag it. So for example, if you want to take those PowerPoints we have there, we can drag that, maybe you want to put it onto a Cloud system, so you literally drag it over and drop it down onto Dropbox. That will move it from that computer here and put it on to Dropbox, which means we are saving memory on the computer. You maybe want to copy it, so we can just highlight, click on it, copy the File and move it if we needed to. Other areas on here are the Document section. So Documents, it's just another way of storing information. It may well be you have got loads and loads of Files or you are working on a project, you want to put it in here and you can just make a Folder. So if you need to make a Folder, just create a new folder, call it what you want and you can call here Work Project and then that Folder is made.
If we are in the Work Project and we want to move back, so we go back to the Desktop and we think these PowerPoints, we want to move onto the Document section, so to clear our Desktop up, so we can take the Folder there, we can move it across and then we can move it onto Documents, maybe hold it for second, that ups and then we can drop that straight away onto the Work Projects. So if we double click on it, there are the PowerPoints, they are all there and they are all sitting on that system. So that's a simple way of moving and organizing things and getting them where you need them, so if you need to move it back, just go back, see there is the Work Project, PowerPoints. If you want to revert those back to where we had them from, we can just copy the File if we wanted to copy and leave it in that source or just take the File, click on it, drag it across, put it back into the Downloads area, comes up and we can just leave that straight into the Downloads area.
So with Folders here, you see three of these Documents, all on a very, very similar subject. So what we might do there is create a Folder for those. But the key thing with the Downloads Folder is Downloads are there, but what you should not have is loads and loads of programs in here or Folders and Documents. It is a good idea to File them away. Just imagine these are all just Files that have been put on to your computer or someone has given them to you, try and find somewhere better to put them because they are just very messy here and you could find it hard to get the information that you want. So for example here, in this video, we might say no we use that quite a lot, so we are going to put that onto the Desktop.
Finding information is another easy way of doing it. So you have a Search Box on there, so what you can do here on the Search Box is just put in the File you are trying to find. So if we say here we are looking at word example, so we are searching the entire computer here, you see it's come up with this area here, this Mac, there are loads and loads of Files there. We can also search an individual Folder, so if we click on the Downloads area, we are just searching in that Folder and then also we can hit the plus button up here and we can narrow the search down. So if we are looking here, we want to find some information about it; when we last accessed the File, we can click on it here. We then... It says any Folder that was opened recently, you think well hey, did I maybe use that within the last day? No. Maybe in the last 10 days. There it is. So you can do a date search. This is the last time that File was opened. So rather than have a whole screen of things on there, we just searched for it, I found exactly the File I want it is called word example, I can open that up and work with it.
Now other things you can do with the search area, you can look by the kind of File, which is the last opened, names. You can also look at different areas, whether it's an application, whether it's Documents, Folders or all sorts of things. So you can narrow your searches down. So the important thing with managing your Files is to keep them as tidy as possible, make sure that everything has got proper names and you haven't made spelling mistakes, because if you are looking for word example and you have spelt any of that wrong, you are not going to find it. So always be careful when you are calling Files names and calling Folders, make sure they are exactly the right name and they will be much easier to find.
The final thing you could do is you can colour code Files or Folders. So we had the example thereof the word examples, so if we just click on it, then that will highlight that one blue, go at the top here and you see some colours and these are tags so we want to change colour and this is something we want to mark as a red, so we can hit the red button and then you see how it's put a little red dot next to it. We can do exactly the same with a Folder if we wanted to. Go through with red. You can even tag different colours, so maybe this word example, you want to tag it in a green as well, so we can click that and now we have got a red and a green dot next to it. And then down the left-hand side here, you can have what those tags mean. So here we have got the red meaning important, and green is an ITG File. So we can also, by clicking on the left-hand side, we can search for things within that particular coloured tag. It just makes it easier to find if you had a tag on the left-hand side, which is just for your personal stuff, you can then just click down the left, it will go straight to all your Documents with that particular colour-coded tag associated with it.
- EDSQ Unit 1 LO 3.1