File Explorer in Windows 8
File Explorer in Windows 8 now makes use of ribbons instead of menus.
NOTE: For those of you participating in the live Webinar, the following link will open the documentation in a new browser window. Opens a new window
The File Explorer Window
The File Explorer window contains the following parts, starting from the top of the screen:
- Title bar - row one
- Quick Access Toolbar (QAT), far left side
- Title bar, center, typically displays the currently selected folder name
- Close, minimize, maximize, restore symbols, far right side
- Upper tabs of the ribbon starting at the left side, with the minimize the ribbon button and Help button on the far right side - row two
- Lower ribbon groups - approximately rows three through six
- Buttons for Back, Forward, Recent Locations starting at the left side, the Address bar in the middle, and Search edit box on the right side - row seven
- NOTE: The toolbar which was present in this position is no longer included in File Explorer.
- Column headers for file list view, including name, date modified, etc. - row eight
- The main part of the window, which can contain the tree view on the left side, the list view in the middle, and the details pane or preview pane on the right side.
- Status bar - bottom row of the window
The evolution of Windows Explorer from Windows Vista to File Explorer in Windows 8
Tab Order in the File Explorer Window
When File Explorer opens, focus is typically in the file list. Whatever is at the top of the list is in focus, but may not be selected initially. To select it, press the SPACEBAR. Pressing TAB from the list of files moves focus through controls in the dialog box in the following order:
- Name split button
- View mode, details (or whatever view is active) radio button checked
- Search box edit
- Tree view
- Preview pane or Details pane, if open
- List view, again
Pressing SHIFT+TAB moves focus through these controls in the opposite direction.
Tab Order in the Ribbons
Initial tabs on the ribbon include File, Computer, and View. To move to the ribbon, press the ALT key, and then release it. Focus typically moves to the Computer tab. You may use the LEFT or RIGHT ARROW to navigate through the tabs. Focus wraps back to the Computer tab eventually. Pressing TAB to move through the ribbons moves focus through controls in the dialog box in the following order:
- Minimize the ribbon button (to the right of the ribbon tabs)
- Help button (to the right of the minimize the ribbon button)
- Properties button in the Location group of the lower ribbon. From here, pressing TAB moves through all of the controls on the lower ribbon.
- File tab (JAWS currently speaks, "Application menu button drop down grid.")
- Properties button on the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT)
- New folder button on the QAT
- Customize the QAT button
- Computer tab, again
Contextual Tabs
Contextual tabs are tabs that are not normally present on the ribbon unless you are performing a specific task. For example, if you select an image file in the list of files, a Picture Tools contextual tab appears. It contains controls that you might need when working with images, such as rotating images, viewing slide shows, and more. If you are performing other tasks, such as folder or file maintenance, you may find that a Drive Tools contextual tab may appear. It contains controls such as those for burning DVD's, formatting, optimizing, and more.
Images of the Picture Tools and Drive Tools contextual tabs
Some other contextual tabs include the following:
- Search Tools
- Shortcut Tools
- Application Tools
- Compressed Folder Tools
- Music Tools
- And more
Tree View
The tree view typically has groups consisting of the following items:
- Favorites, including desktop, downloads, and recent places
- Libraries, including documents, music, pictures, and videos
- Computer, including local disk C and other drives
- Network, if available
NOTE: As focus moves up or down the tree view nodes, the list view on the right side of the screen does NOT change. To update the list view to see what is in the currently selected folder of the tree view, press ENTER on that item in the tree view.
List View
The list view shows files and folders. You can change the way files and folders appear by changing the View settings. For example, some choices include:
- Icons: Extra large, large, medium, or small icons
- List - This has just one column with the file name, and no headers to sort with.
- Details - This is the author's preferred view. It has multiple columns with column headers. You can move focus to the column headers and press ENTER to sort the column from A to Z, Z to A, in date order, etc.
- Tiles - Contains rows and columns with thumbnails depicting type of files. It is not as intuitive to navigate as the Details view.
- Content - This shows things like file type, authors, size, and date modified, but does not have multiple columns. It is a single column. The information here is not as accessible as in the Details view.
Create a Folder and Move Files to the New Folder
EXERCISE: Follow along with the instructor to make some changes in File Explorer that make it easier to use from the keyboard, create a new folder called TRAINING, and copy several files to this folder.
- If you do not already have File Explorer open, press WINDOWS Key+E to open it.
- Move to the tree view by pressing SHIFT+TAB or TAB, depending on where focus might be on your computer.
- Choose the local disk C on your computer in the tree view, and then press ENTER to show the files and folders available in the list view on the right side of the screen.
- With focus on the local disk C in the tree view, press CTRL+SHIFT+N to create a new folder. This is a File Explorer keystroke. Focus appears in the list view on the right side of the screen on a new folder in edit mode with the words "New folder" selected.
- Type over the text "New folder" and give this folder the name of Training. Press ENTER when you finish typing to get out of edit mode.
- Note that this creates a folder beneath the C drive at level three. Level two is the item "local disk C" and level one above this is "Computer." Press SHIFT+TAB to move back to the tree view and explore the different levels of the tree view with the instructor.
- Press L until focus moves to the local disk C in the tree view.
- Press T until focus moves to the new folder you just created called Training.
- Press ENTER on the Training folder to update the list of files on the right side of File Explorer.
- Notice there are no files in the folder. Try pressing UP or DOWN ARROW. Also try pressing INSERT+PGDN to read the status bar. Do you hear zero items spoken?
- Press SHIFT+TAB to move back to the tree view.
- Press P until you find Program Files, and then press RIGHT ARROW to open it.
- Press F until you find Freedom Scientific, and then press RIGHT ARROW to open it.
- Press T until you find Training, and then press RIGHT ARROW to open it.
- Press DOWN ARROW until you find the folder for JAWS, and then press RIGHT ARROW to open it.
- Press DOWN ARROW to find the folder for ENU. Note that this folder will be different if you are using an international version of JAWS. For example, Spanish users may find an ESP folder; German users may find a DEU folder, and so on.
- Press ENTER on the ENU folder to update the right side list of files.
- Press TAB to move to the list view, and use the ARROW KEYS to select a file or two.
- Press CTRL+C to copy the file(s) to the clipboard, and then press SHIFT+TAB to move back to the tree view.
- Press T until you find the Training folder, and then press ENTER to update the list of files on the right side.
- Press CTRL+V now to paste the files into the Training folder. Now you can press TAB to move into the folder and find the files there.
Changing the View Settings
The exercise above was simply to get some safe files we can work with in the webinar. Now, let's look at how to change the view settings. By default, the file names only show. The file extensions do not, so it may be difficult to determine what type of file it is, especially if there is more than one type of file with the same file name, as several files in the Training folder are.
- Make sure focus is in the list view, and try reading up and down the list. If you have never set the file extensions to show, you will hear that the Saint Pete document is listed twice, as is the Find document. Why is that? They actually have different extensions and will open in different programs.
- Press ALT+V to move to the View tab of the ribbon.
- Let's look at the controls on the lower ribbon together. Press the TAB key, and follow along with the instructor.
- When focus reaches the Layout toolbar, press ENTER to go into this control. Use the ARROW Keys to explore the items here. Make sure focus is on Details, and press ENTER to make this your view. Focus returns to the list view.
- Press ALT+V to move to the View tab of the ribbon again.
- Press the TAB key to move to the File name extensions check box, and press SPACEBAR to check it. Focus returns to the list view, but now the file extensions are shown. What do you find? If you copied the Find or Saint Pete files, they now show that the two files have RTF and TXT extensions. This means that one will open in Notepad, and typically the other will open in WordPad or Microsoft Word. The keytip to move there directly after pressing ALT+V is HF.
- The control just past the file name extensions check box is the hidden files check box. Some people will need or want to show hidden files, and this is where you can do that.
- What if you want to set all folders to show file name extensions? Press ALT+V followed by Y to activate the Options button on the lower ribbon, and then press ENTER on Change Folder and Search Options. The Folder Options multi page dialog box opens. Focus is on the General tab page.
- Press CTRL+TAB to move to the View tab. Focus is on the Apply to Folders button. You can apply the view that you are using for this folder to all folders of this type.
- Go ahead and press SPACEBAR to activate this button. A new dialog box asks, "Do you want all folders of this type to match this folder's view settings?" Choose the Yes button. Focus returns to the Apply to Folders button.
- Press TAB to move to the OK button and then activate it with the SPACEBAR.
For now, let's move on to the next section.
Column Headers, Sort Order, and Filtering Check Boxes
If you set the view to Details, there are typically four columns of information by default in the list view. They are:
- Name
- Date modified
- Type
- And size
- Make sure that focus is on a file in the list view, and then press RIGHT ARROW and LEFT ARROW to move to the different columns and back again.
- Make sure focus is back in the Name column, and press TAB. Focus moves to the column header for Name.
- Press ENTER on the Name column header. The list below is sorted in reverse order. Focus returns to the list.
- Verify the difference by pressing HOME to move to the top of the list, and then press DOWN ARROW to move down the list.
- Press TAB again to move focus back to the Name column header.
- Press ENTER on the Name column header to sort the list below again in reverse order. Focus returns to the list.
- Press TAB once more to move to the Name column header, and this time press RIGHT ARROW to move to the Date Modified column header.
- Press ENTER on the Date Modified column header. The list below is sorted in reverse order. Focus returns to the list.
- Press TAB again. Did you notice that this time, focus went directly to the Date Modified column header?
- Press ENTER if you want to sort the files in the order they were in originally. Focus returns to the list view.
- Press TAB once more to move to the Date Modified column header, and then press LEFT ARROW to move to the Name column header.
- If you want to sort by Name, press ENTER on the Name tab, otherwise you can leave the view set to the date modified setting.
- When you are finished changing the view, press TAB if necessary to make sure focus is back in the list view.
Search
Let us take a look at the Search feature next. Search looks in all of the folders and subfolders at the level of the tree view where the focus is.
- First, press SHIFT+TAB to move back to the tree view.
- Make sure focus is on the local disk C again, and then press ENTER to update the list of files on the right side.
- With focus still in the tree view, press TAB about five times, or to move to the search edit box directly, press CTRL+E. I will do that now.
- Type in a word or phrase to look for. File Explorer looks for the search word or phrase in file names as well as in the contents of documents. I will type in saint, since I know that there are at least a few documents on my computer with that name. As you begin typing in the search edit box, the computer begins searching, and the list view below changes to show the results. It may take a few minutes the first time you do this.
- To read the number of files or folders that match the search, press INSERT+PGDN to read the status bar. This number may change as the indexing proceeds, so you may press the keystroke again to see if the results are increasing or not.
- When the search is complete, or even before, you can press DOWN ARROW to move directly back to the list view and begin exploring the results.
While focus is in the search edit box or in the list of files found while searching, remember that contextual tabs appear from time-to-time. In this case, the Search Tools tab has appeared on the ribbon. Press ALT to move to the Search Tools tab, and then press TAB to move through the lower ribbon to explore the items available here. They include:
- Search again in
- Date modified
- Kind
- Size
- Advanced options
- And more
When you are finished exploring the ribbon, press CTRL+E to move back to the search edit box, and then ESC again to clear the search. If focus is in the list of items found during the search, just press ESC once to clear the search.
Libraries
Libraries are where all of your documents can be stored in one place. A library is similar to a folder, but it differs in that it gathers files that are found in several different locations. For example, you might have music files stored on your local primary hard disk C drive, and on a second hard disk, D drive. You can also have music files on an external hard disk, or on a network drive, for example, and have them show up in your library. You can access all of your music in one place in the library.
Libraries do not actually store your files, but rather, they allow you to access them from a central location. You can add new libraries, but Windows has the following default libraries:
- Documents
- Music
- Pictures
- Videos
Managing Libraries
EXERCISE: In File Explorer, move focus to the tree view and follow along with the instructor.
- Press L in the tree view of File Explorer until you find the Libraries node of the tree.
- Press DOWN ARROW to explore the libraries there.
- Press ENTER on the Documents library. As soon as you do that, a Library Tools contextual tab appears on the ribbon.
- Press ALT to move to the ribbon, and then press RIGHT ARROW to move to the Library Tools Manage tab of the ribbon. Alternatively you may also press the keytip JL to move to it directly.
- Press TAB to explore the controls in the lower ribbon, including the following:
- Manage library button
- Optimize library for drop down
- Restore settings
- Move to the Manage library button, and then press ENTER. The Documents Library Locations dialog box opens. Focus is on the OK button. Note that if you perform these steps in another library, the dialog box changes to show music, pictures, videos, etc.
The Documents Library Locations dialog box
- Press TAB to explore the dialog box with the instructor. Make note of the list of library locations.
- Press SPACEBAR on the Add button. An Include Folder in Documents dialog box opens. Here you may choose additional folders to add to the documents library. You may also browse to your other disk drives and choose folders there.
- For now, press ESC to get out of the dialog boxes and return to the tree view.
Libraries are a useful feature of Windows Explorer in earlier versions of Windows and in File Explorer in Windows 8. Visit this Microsoft help topic for more information on how to add or remove a folder in libraries Opens a new window.
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