Windows Explorer is one of the most powerful tools available to you when dealing with files and it can be a lot of fun if you haven't used it before. It's a powerful tool that should be used regularly to keep track of what's going on "in there" but at the same time it should be dealt with carefully. If you think of a computer as a living thing, then Explorer is the closest thing to brain surgery that exists.

      To open Explorer, hold down the Windows key on your keyboard and while holding it down press the "E" key.

      The "Windows" key located between the ALT and the CTRL key on most contemporary keyboards for PC machines. Otherwise, go to "Start/Programs/Windows Explorer."

      Once opened, choose "View" and click on "Details." This gives you the view as above. of course, your Explorer view will show what is on YOUR hardrive so the actual folders visible will be different from what you see here becasue this is an image of my hard drive.

      Explorer shows the contents of your hard drive in a graphical format that represents a filing cabinet. The left pane of the Explorer view is the entire cabinet. In that pane you will see grey boxes labeled "C" and possibly "D" and "E" and other such letters. These are the individual 'drawers' in the filing cabinet. The one on top labeled "A" is your floppy drive. The last one is probably CDrom drive. In between and in other locations might be other hard drives, hard drive partitions, Zip drives, memory card readers, and other such devices.

      Let's take a little visit through some of what's in there to give you an ides of how to use Explorer. Open the "C" drawer by clicking on the little grey box next to "C" in the left pane. You will see that in the right pane a lot of stuff shows up.

      Here, in the right pane you see a number of file folders. These little folder icons represent individual file folders that reside in the "drawer" we call "C". Below the folders are a number of other icons with a bunch of stuff written after them. These are the computer files in the root directory. Think of them as individual papers that are not in folders but just placed in the front of the drawer we are calling "C".

      Now, go back to the left pane and click on the "+" icon next to the letter "C". You now see the same list of folders that appear in the right pane. It's just another way of looking at what's in there.

      In the left pane, find the folder named "Windows." and click on the little "+" next to it. It opens an other set of folders nested below it. These are folders inside the "Windows" folder. Those folders are said to be "nested." The folders in the "C" folder are called "sub-folders." Find the folder named "Start menu" and click on the "+" next to it to see what's in there. You will find a folder named "Programs." Now click on the "+" next to that and find the folder called "StartUp." So in computerese, you are in the folder called, "C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp." This folder contains all the applications that are not part of the operating system itself that start when Windows starts. You may find that some of the applications in here are the same ones that appear in the tool tray. This is how they get started. You can put a shortcut to any application you want to start up with Windows in this folder.

      Of course there's a lot more you can do in Explorer, so a word of caution here. There are files and folders that exist in there that if renamed, removed or changed in some way, could keep windows from operating properly, and in some cases could actually keep you from accessing your computer at all without re-installing the operating system. To help you avoid that, when you have Explorer open, click on "VIEW" and choose "FOLDER OPTIONS" at the bottom. When that window opens click on the "VIEW" tab. As seen above, you now want to find the "Do not show hidden or system files" option and be sure the radio button next to it is selected, then click on "Apply" then "OK" then close those windows. This is particularly important if you have others using your computer (particularly children). Although they (or you) can still delete things that can cause problems, this option protects the most vital parts of the operating system. The deletion of the wrong thing can actually keep the computer from working and necessitate the re-installation of the operating system (Windows), the re-installation of every application on the hard drive, ad the loss of every personal setting and file that exists there.

      In Explorer you can do all sorts of things, most of which are non-destructive. One of the handiest is the manipulation of files. This is most handy when dealing with things like digital cameras and images. Let's say you have a digital camera that plugs into the computer (or possibly a memory card reader that shows up as a drive in (Explorer). Insert the memory card (or plug in the camera) and open Explorer. Open the folder where the images are (either the card reader or the icon for the camera). The images will appear in the list in the right-hand pane. Now you can use all the things you learned when you took my copy-and-paste and cut-and-paste lessons (see the FRCN website in the "FRCN University" area).

      It would work something like this: Select then copy all the images in the folder (CTRL-A then CTRL-C). Now move to the folder where you would like the images to reside until viewed and edited. Open that folder by double-left-clicking on it. The contents of that folder now appear in the right-hand pane of Explorer. With the folder still selected (it will be highlighted in the left-hand pane), paste the files into that folder (CTRL-V).

      Now you have a copy of all those images in another folder. That's important because the files still exist in the original location (camera or memory card). Once you have finishing editing and saving to a CD or other permanent location, the original files in the camera or on the memory card cen be safely deleted.

      Alternatively, select the images you want to move and RIGHT click on the selection group and choose "COPY" then navigate to the folder where they will be located and right click on that folder and choose "Paste."

      What if you want the images to be in a folder that doesn't currently exist? Select the parent folder into which the new folder will be placed.

      Now go to the top of the Explorer window and choose "File/New/Folder."

      This will place a new folder into the Explorer interface in the last place you had selected. The name of the folder is automatically highlighted, so all you now have to do now is type a name for the new folder and hit ENTER to rename the folder.

      Here's another easy yet powerful function in Windows using Explorer. To make it easier in the future to access Explorer, while it is now open, go to the folder on the C:\ drive called "WINDOWS" and open it. Find the application called "EXPLORER.EXE". Click on it with the RIGHT mouse button and choose "Send To" from the menu that popped up. From the next menu that appears click on "Desktop as Shortcut." You can now easily open Explorer with the shortcut on the desktop.

      For more advanced users, it is possible to have multiple instances of Explorer open. Just open Explorer as mentioned above then do it again. You can place the windows side-by-side and drag and drop files from one pane to the other or copying them back and forth. This is handy when you want to compare two folders when looking for the most recent updates of a file.

      If at some point you find that you have deleted something that should not have been deleted, stop what you are doing, and before doing anything else (do not close Explorer) go to "Edit" and click on the "Undo.." choice. It may say something like, "Undo Delete" or "Undo Move" depending on what the last thing you did was. This will usually give you the opportunity to reverse the last thing that you did... usually.