9/8/2014 Organizing Computer 1. Protect your computer Files & Folders September 11 • A computer should always 4pm, 6:30pm or anytime afterwards have the most recent having trouble finding things updates installed for on your computer? spam filters, wondering what the best way is to begin getting organized? anti-virus and At 4pm watch live from your local library or from anti-spyware this link http://alturl.com/g69zz At 6:30pm come to Newton and participate Presenter: software and with a live audience. Nathan Carr, •Watch the recorded presentation anytime after the IT Supervisor, a secure firewall. 11th at http://alturl.com/ph9xw at the Newton Public Library http://cdn.greenprophet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/frying-pan-kolbotek-neoflam-560x475.jpg If your computer is a mess, you’re probably already aware of Disclaimer it. But just in case you’re not, here are some tell-tale signs: • Everyone has their own favorite methodology of • Your Desktop has over 40 icons on it organizing and filing, and it’s all too easy to get • “My Documents” contains over 300 files and 60 into “My Way is Better than Your Way” folders, including MP3s and digital photos arguments. The reality is that there is no perfect • You use the Windows’ built-in search facility whenever you need to find a file way • You can’t find programs in the out-of-control list of • the tips I have described here are only my programs in your Start Menu opinions of ways of doing it. Hopefully some of • You save all your Word documents in one folder, all these tips will work for you too, but please don’t your spreadsheets in a second folder, etc read this as any sort of “right” way to do it. of • Any given file that you’re looking for may be in any one getting things organized. of four different sets of folders http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15677/zen-and-the-art-of-file-and-folder-organization http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15677/zen-and-the-art-of-file-and-folder-organization To get things off the desktop Use the Quick Launch Bar as a Application and File Launcher That Quick Launch bar (to the right of the Start button) is a lot more useful than people give it credit for. http://cdn8.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/592x515x1sample.png.pagespeed.ic.EIFMhBvl4W.png • Most people simply have half a dozen icons in it, and use it to start just those programs. Does your desktop look like this? But it can actually be used to instantly access just about anything in your http://computertutorflorida.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/desktop.jpg filing system: 1 9/8/2014 Move your documents onto a separate hard drive Did you know that it’s actually possible and only use the “C:” for the operating System For redirecting personal system folders, Windows 7 has a built-in procedure. to store your files on the D: drive and Here is how it works: -Open the Start menu and click your user name to open the User folder yet access them as if they were on the -Right-click the personal folder you want to redirect to another location. -Select “Properties” C: drive? And no, -Click the tab “Location” The dialog box shown below will open I’m not talking about shortcuts here Click the button “Move” -An Explorer dialog “Select a destination” will open (although the concept is very similar). -Browse to the location where you • By using the shell command mklink (make link), you can essentially take a want to redirect this folder. You can folder that lives on one drive and create an alias for it on a different drive select another location on this (you can do lots more than that with mklink) computer, another drive attached to • You must run these commands from a command prompt this computer, or another computer – click the Start button, type cmd and press Enter) on the network • It may be that the only files you wish to store on the D: drive are your -Click the folder where you want to movie collection. store the files (not the root of a drive) You could locate all your movie files in the root of your D: drive, and then -Click the button “Select Folder” link it to C:\Files\Media\Movies, as follows: -Click “OK” http://1.bp.blogspot.com/- In the dialog that appears, click “Yes” ge4cX902vGI/UXRfbJd66uI/AAAAAAAALN0/cAeAp_nE3dg/s640/How+to+remove+My+Documents,+My+Pictures,+My+Music+and+My+Videos+folders+fr mklink /d c:\files\media\movies d:\ om+the+Computer+folder+in+Windows+8.1.png to move all the files to the new location. http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-move-windows-7- personal-folders-my-documents-another-drive.htm consider these common tasks that are not Never Use the “My Documents” folder? achievable with desktop search software: • It sounds heretical, but: Don’t ever use your “My Documents” folder http://www.bayviewbelmullet.com/files/5013/3838/8391/search-icon.jpg • Find files manually. Often it’s not convenient, speedy or even possible to utilize your for files that are important to you! Remove your icons/links to “My desktop search software to find what you want. It doesn’t work 100% of the time, or you may not even have it installed. Sometimes its just plain faster to go straight to the file you Documents” and replace them with links to the folders you created want, if you know it’s in a particular sub-folder, rather than trawling through hundreds of and you actually care about! search results. • Every data file (document, photo, music file, etc) that you create, own or is important to you, • Find groups of similar files (e.g. all your “work” files, all the photos of your Europe holiday in 2008, all your music videos, all the MP3s from Dark Side of the Moon, all your letters no matter where it came from, should be found within one single folder. you wrote to your wife, all your tax returns). Clever naming of the files will only get you so far. Sometimes it’s the date the file was created that’s important, other times it’s the • that one single folder should be located at the root of your C: drive file format, and other times it’s the purpose of the file. How do you name a collection of (as a sub-folder of C:\). In other words, do not base your folder structure in standard files so that they’re easy to isolate based on any of the above criteria? Short answer, you folders like “My Documents”. can’t. If you do, then you’re leaving it up to the operating system engineers to decide what folder • Move files to a new computer. It’s time to upgrade your computer. How do you quickly structure is best for you. grab all the files that are important to you? Or you decide to have two computers now – one for home and one for work. How do you quickly isolate only the work-related files to • Every operating system has a different file system! move them to the work computer? In Windows 7 your files are found in C:\Users\YourName, • Synchronize files to other computers. If you have more than one computer, and you need to mirror some of your files onto the other computer (e.g. your music collection), then whilst on Windows XP it was C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\My Documents. you need a way to quickly determine which files are to be synced and which are In UNIX systems it’s often /home/YourName. not. Surely you don’t want to synchronize everything? • Choose which files to back up. If your backup regime calls for multiple backups, or • These standard default folders tend to fill up with junk files and requires speedy backups, then you’ll need to be able to specify which files are to be folders that are not at all important to you. backed up, and which are not. This is not possible if they’re all in the same folder. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15677/zen-and-the-art-of-file-and-folder-organization http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15677/zen-and-the-art-of-file-and-folder-organization Never Use the “My Documents” folder p2 If you only have one hard disk (C:), then create a dedicated folder that • “My Documents” is the worst offender. Every second will contain all your files – something like C:\Files. The name of the folder is not important, but make it a single, brief word. piece of software OR VIRUS you install, it seems, likes to There are several reasons for this: create its own folder in the “My Documents” folder. – These folders usually don’t fit within your • When creating a backup regime, it’s easy to organizational structure, so don’t use them! In fact, decide what files should be backed up – they’re don’t even use the “My Documents” folder at all in the one folder! all. Allow it to fill up with junk, and then simply • If you ever decide to trade in your computer for a ignore it. new one, you know exactly which files to migrate • You will always know where to begin a search for – Once this has been done, and all your files live any file in one folder, all the other folders in C:\ can be • If you synchronize files with other computers, it thought of as “operating system” folders, and makes your synchronization routines very therefore of little day-to-day interest for us.