PTNSYSTEMS NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 2007

Part 1 – Knowing your way around and keyboard tips PART 2

Part 2 - Notice for F2S customers

Last month we started to look at the way we view the data on our computer and clarifying how the filing system works so that we can better understand what's going on behind the scenes. This will enable us to keep things in order, take greater control of our data and gain confidence when navigating many of the programs we use from day to day. In our last newsletter we ended by creating a TEST FOLDER, and changing our computer's view settings so we always see a details view of folders, so before proceeding, it may help to review last month's article.

Ok, let's navigate to our TEST FOLDER and open it, (remember to use Alt - Tab to read this and look at our TEST FOLDER quickly, we'll call this tabbing, or you could always print the page, but think of the trees?), our window should have an address toolbar telling us the path to the data we are looking at, such as C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\TEST FOLDER. (more on this later) and we should be looking at a details view i.e. little icons on the left with information in columns to the right. If we look at these columns we should see headings such as name, size, type, date modified etc. we will call these areas the column headings. If you cannot see a particular column try right clicking on the column headings, you should get a menu which allows you to add a whole range of extra columns if necessary. If you move the mouse over the joints in the column headings you will notice the mouse changes to a vertical line, if you hold down the left click you can move the columns to the left and right and resize them to suit.

Looking at our TEST FOLDER and its contents, we can see it contains 6 text documents, let's rename them A-F, right click on the first one and select rename, then type A in the naming box, do this for the others so we have six files called A, B, C, D, E, and F. Now open the A document and type something on the blank page then close it accepting the changes. When we look at the TEST FOLDER now we should see six files called A-F, they will all be 0 KB in size except for the A file.

Now we can practise organising data based on name, size, type or date modified etc., remember this will help, and can be applied to, all the folders on our computer. If we look at the first column it should say name and next to it you should see a tiny triangle facing up or down, if you left click on the column heading you will see the data re-arranges itself in a reverse alphabetical order, click again and it returns to its original order. Next time you need to find a file quickly and you know the name, arrange by name to make it easier to see, if you have masses of data in a particular folder and want to organise it better,  cut all the files beginning with the letters a-f g-k etc. and put them in sub folders, there are many ways this can help and more on folders later. If we left click on the size column heading our six files are organised in order of size, biggest to smallest, click again and the order is reversed. This can help if we are looking for larger files within a folder or we want to organise our data based on size, we could also use this clean out larger items to free up space on our PC. Next by clicking the date modified column heading, our data is arranged in order it was last opened or used, click the heading again and the order is reversed, this can help looking for recent documents in a folder or again to remove older data from the hard drive. The type column heading allows us to bunch all our files together such as word documents or jpeg pictures thus enabling us to select a group of particular file types and work with them. The small triangle in the column headings tells us which way our data is organised and in which direction depending which way it faces e.g. newest first, smallest first etc.

The ability to quickly arrange our data in many ways before our eyes can be invaluable but before we go spring cleaning our computers and sorting all our data out into a clear file and folder system there are a couple of other useful areas we need to explore. Arranging the way our data is viewed is one thing, now we will look at ways of quickly selecting individual and/or groups of, files and folders. Going back to our TEST FOLDER let's practise by organising these six files, our aim is to create two new folders in the TEST FOLDER and put files B-F in one folder and file A in another. To make the two new folders right click anywhere inside the TEST FOLDER, in a blank area, and select new then folder, do this twice and name the folders BIG and SMALL. Our test folder should now contain six files A-F and two folders called BIG and SMALL, if we wanted to select everything in our TEST FOLDER and do something with it we could select edit at the top of the page and select select all but if you look to the left of this option you should see Ctrl+A, this is the keyboard shortcut for selecting everything inside a folder. Left click anywhere inside the TEST FOLDER and press the Ctrl and A buttons on the keyboard, everything is now blue or, more importantly, active, we could, for example, now right click on the blue area and delete, copy, cut etc. all the selected files and folders. Remember Ctrl + A = select all.

The A file was the only one with anything written on it, so it should be the biggest file in the folder, left click on the size column heading and it should be at the top, right click on it and select cut, open the BIG folder, right click then paste, our A file should now be in the BIG folder. Now click on the back arrow in the top left of your screen or the manila folder with the green upward arrow to get back to the TEST FOLDER, we now need to get files B-F in to the SMALL folder. Here are a couple of ways to select a group of items within a folder, if the data is in a nice order we can select the first file then press the shift key on our keyboard (the one above the Ctrl key) then the select the last file in the group, all should now be blue and active. Another way is to select the data we don't want to move and go to edit then invert selection. Another way to select data, is to keep the Ctrl key held down while we left click on files with our mouse, once we have selected our data, and it is blue/active, whatever we select from the right click menu will affect all the blue/active files. The last method we will practise involves moving the mouse slightly off to the right of our first file in a group and whilst holding down the left click button moving the arrow on the screen towards our data and drawing a blue/active box over the files we want to work with. Using any of, or combinations of, the above, we can now cut our remaining five files and paste them into the SMALL folder. Remember we need to right click on the blue area to work with our selected files and any command we give will affect ALL the blue/highlighted files; you can always practise with your TEST FOLDER before tackling the main drive on your PC.

Hopefully you've managed to follow most of the instructions here and are now able to quickly arrange your data on the screen to suit, you should also be able to quickly select the data from those folders before selecting and organising it. Many of the problems we encounter are more costly to fix due to the fact that the data is scattered all over the hard drive, leaving us no option but to backup the entire disk before starting the recovery process. With computers coming with increasingly large hard drives it's all too easy to keep just dumping everything into the My Documents folder where it soon becomes unmanageable and confusing with many vaguely named files and folders littering the drive. By keeping data organised you are more able to save data and run backups, find what you want quickly and recover from disasters more efficiently.

*a complete list of keyboard shortcuts can be found here

F2S

Finally a notice to many of our customers who are using F2S as their service provider, please note that you able to take advantage of their 500 free minutes telephone offer by logging into your online control panel and activating the service, if you need any help with this please contact them on 0870 242 3759.  F2s have recently been acquired by Tiscali but we have yet to see any detrimental effect on F2S or, more importantly, the levels of customer support, F2S has always been primarily aimed at business users and as far as we can tell their service will not be interfered with by Tiscali, PTNSYSTEMS will monitor the situation and keep everyone informed if there is any downturn in the levels of service provided.