This learning module is entitled, “Using Windows Explorer.” This lesson will introduce you to the Windows Explorer file management program provided with Windows ’95, Windows ’98 and Windows NT operating systems. In this lesson, you will learn how to set your Windows Explorer view for optimal performance with JAWS for Windows, as well as techniques for organizing file and folder information on your computer. Windows Explorer is the file management program in the Windows ’95, Windows ’98 and Windows NT operating systems. My focus is on the Desktop, and I have one program running, which is JAWS. I’m going to press the key combination of the WINDOWS LOGO KEY + E to open Windows Explorer. E. Exploring dash My Computer. Folders Tree view. My Computer opened, XX items. To move through or expand items, use the arrow keys. JAWS reads the title bar of the new open window and the name the item is currently focused on. Later, I’ll point out how the title bar can be used as a reference when navigating in Windows Explorer. JAWS announced the window control I landed on, which was a tree view. Now, if you’re running in a different operating system, such as ’95 or NT, you may have landed in the list view, which is another control in Windows Explorer. You can move between the tree view, the list view, and the other areas that may or may not be active on your machine by pressing the TAB key. You should only have to press the TAB key at most three or four times, but eventually, you will land in the Tree view, which is where we will begin. Go ahead if necessary and press TAB until you land in the Tree view. Before we get started, I want to make sure my window is maximized so as much information can be displayed on the screen as possible. To maximize my window, I’m going to press the key combination ALT+SPACEBAR to open the application control menu. Alt Space. Menu active. Restore grayed. To move through items, press UP or DOWN ARROW. R. I’m going to press the accelerator key X to maximize this window. X. Leaving menus. I’ve returned to the tree view. I’m going to demonstrate how we can move between the tree view and the list view by pressing the TAB key. TAB. List view. Not selected three one half floppy left paren a colon right paren. One of XX. To move to items, use the arrow keys. We’ve landed in the list view. We can tab again, and you’ll find that there’s a third control. I’ll press TAB one more time now. TAB. Address edit combo. My Computer, zero items. To set the value, use the arrow keys, or type the value. Some computers may have this item already turned off, and if so, you will not land here. I’m going to remove this control by going to the view menu by pressing ALT+V as in “view” to open the view menu. Alt V. Menu active. Toolbar sub-menu. To move through items, press UP or DOWN ARROW. T. I’ve landed on the first menu item in the view menu. If you’re running Windows ’95 or NT, you would have heard, “Tool bars checked” if you landed in that combo box. Since I’m running Windows ’98, and you may find this in later versions of Windows ’95, there’s a sub-menu and there’s several tool bars that you can either check or uncheck. If you heard, “Tool bars checked,” simply press ENTER to turn off that option. I’m going to press ENTER to open this sub-menu since I’m running Windows ’98. ENTER. Standard buttons checked. S. The standard buttons tool bar is one of the tool bars contained within this sub-menu. I’m not going to remove this sub-menu, as it really doesn’t affect the work that we’re going to do in Windows Explorer. However, if I down arrow, Address bar checked. A. I find that the address bar is checked. I want to uncheck this address bar by pressing ENTER. I’ll press the ENTER key now. ENTER. Leaving menus. My address bar is now gone. Windows Explorer is a hierarchical structure of the entire contents of our computer. We use Windows Explorer to conduct file management tasks, such as moving or renaming files and folders. We can organize the files we create and store them in folders we create. There are no rules in how you choose to organize your files and folders. You simply do what makes sense to you. If you press TAB again, you may land on a button called “Tool Bar, Close button”. If you do, press TAB one more time and you will land back in the tree view. This tool bar close button appears in later versions of Windows Explorer. Before I show you how to move to those files and folders on your computer, I want to briefly mention the differences between a file and a folder. Think of a file as a single piece of paper. An example of a file would be a text or a Word document. A folder is a storage place, similar to a notebook storing paper, for other files and other folders. Currently, our focus is on the My Computer item in the tree view. The uppermost level of the tree view in Windows Explorer is the Desktop, which is just above where we are in the tree view. The tree view is arranged vertically, and I can go up and down my tree view my using my up and down arrow keys. The item “My Computer” is level one and the Desktop is the uppermost part of the computer, or level zero, so I must press the up arrow key to move to the Desktop. Level zero, Desktop opened. Seven items. We’re going to practice navigating in the tree view, opening and closing tree view items, and navigating down our tree several levels. The hard drive or the C drive is level two, so I’m going to down arrow from the Desktop to move to the hard drive. My Computer opened. Nine items. We have arrived at My Computer again, and JAWS announced that My Computer was opened. The items in your tree view can be either opened or closed. When a tree view item is closed, it means the contents of that tree view item are not visible when you use your UP or DOWN ARROW to navigate through the tree view. Since My Computer is opened, if I press my down arrow key, I will eventually find the hard drive. If My Computer is not opened in your tree view, simply press the RIGHT ARROW key to open it. To close a tree view item, you press the LEFT ARROW key. I’m going to continue navigating down my tree view by pressing my down arrow key. Level two, Three one half floppy left paren A colon right paren closed. One of nine. Exploring dash My Computer dialog. A colon backslash is not accessible period. The device is not ready period. Retry button. To activate, press SPACEBAR. ALT+R. A dialog box has appeared on our screen, and JAWS read the default button in this dialog box, which is the Retry button. When navigating in the tree view, your computer will try to read your three-and-a-half floppy or your CD ROM drive. If there isn’t a floppy or a CD in either of these drives, you will get this message. I’m going to press TAB to move to the Cancel button. TAB. Cancel button. To activate, press SPACEBAR. This is the only other button in this dialog box. I'll press SPACEBAR now. SPACEBAR. Folders Tree view. My Computer opened, etc… So I’ve returned to my tree view and now I’m free to navigate. Remember, as you navigate the tree view, if you press your up or down arrow key, and you try to pass the three-and-a-half floppy or the CD ROM and you don’t have either a three-and-a-half floppy or a CD in that drive, you’re going to get that message again. I want to move to my C drive, so I’m going to press the down arrow key twice quickly now to move me past my A drive and onto my C drive. If you have two floppy drives, they would normally be labeled Drive A and Drive B, and in this case you would have to down arrow three times quickly to get to your hard drive in the tree view. Local disk C colon opened. Forty-eight items. JAWS announced that our C drive is opened. If your machine reports that the C drive is closed, press RIGHT ARROW to open it so that you can view the items within it on the tree. If, on your computer, JAWS announced this tree view item as, “LEFT paren C right paren” then that is how it’s currently being displayed. You can give the C drive a label so the next time you are navigating in your tree view and you want to move to your C drive, you can use first-letter navigation. To label your C drive, in other words, to give it a name, you can use the context menu or you can press the key combination to open the Properties dialog, which is ALT + ENTER when the tree view item is selected. I’m going to press ALT+ENTER now to open the Properties dialog. ALT ENTER. Local disk C colon properties dialog. General page. Label colon edit. Local Disk. Type in text. ALT+L. We’ve landed in an edit field where we can simply type the name. I’m going to name mine, “Hard drive” and press ENTER. H-a-r-d-SPACE-d-r-i-v-e ENTER. Exploring dash left paren C colon right paren. Folders tree view. LEFT paren C colon right paren opened. Hard drive left paren C colon right paren. Forty-eight items. To move through or expand items, use the arrow keys. We are still in the tree view and our new label is being displayed. Now, when we move through the tree view, we can simply press the first letter, just H, and move to that item. The items contained directly off my hard drive are on level three. I’m going to move to the JAWS for Windows folder by using first-letter navigation. I’ll press the letter J now. If you have more than one copy of JAWS on your system you may need to press the letter J more than once to land on the JAWS 40 folder. J. Level three. JAWS40 closed. Sixteen of forty-eight. We can open the JAWS for Windows folder to continue our navigation in the tree view by pressing the RIGHT ARROW key. I’m going to press that now. JAWS40 opened. Four items. Our focus is still on the tree view item, but this time it’s opened, and the items that are contained within this folder are below it. I’d like for us to move to the Manuals folder, I’m going to do that by pressing M. M. Level four. Manuals closed. Two of four. JAWS announced that we’re four levels down in the tree view. There are files I’d like for us to move to, but all files are shown in a separate list to the right. In order to reach this list, we must press TAB. TAB. List view. Not selected ENU. One of one. To move to items, use the arrow keys. The first item in our list view, in fact the only item in this list view, is not selected and the folder is called E-N-U, which stands for English, United States. The list view and the tree view have a relationship. The list view item shows the contents of the folder we were on in the tree view. To select the first item in the list view, you can press your SPACEBAR; I’m going to do that now. Space. ENU. Now that this item is selected, I press ENTER to open it, whereas in the tree view, I was pressing my RIGHT ARROW to open a tree view item. I’ll press ENTER now. ENTER. List view not selected authorization Key guide dot doc. One of eight. To move to items, use the arrow keys. JAWS announced the first item in this list view, and it said that it was unselected. When we’re navigating in the list view, we’ll be able to hear the difference between when we land on a folder than when we land on a file. When we land on a file, JAWS would read the name of that list view item, as well as the three-character file extension associated with that file. You open folders and files the same way in the list view, except when you open files, the computer launches the associated program for that file. List view items, unlike tree view items, can be arranged in columns and rows, similar to how our Desktop is arranged. In this case, we can use our UP, DOWN, RIGHT, and LEFT ARROW keys to move to list view items. Later I will show you how to change your list view into a vertical list. First I would like to move to and open a file called, "KEYSTROKES.txt." I think you might find this file useful because it contains a list of quick reference keystrokes and a brief description of what each one of those keystrokes do. I’m going to move to this file now by pressing K twice. K. Keystrokes.doc K. Keystrokes.txt As you heard, two versions of this file exist. The file with a "doc" extension is a Microsoft Word document. Because everyone might not have Microsoft Word installed on his or her computer, we'll use the standard text file version of this file, whose extension is "txt." Now to open a file within the list view, simply press your ENTER key. ENTER. Keystrokes dot txt, Notepad edit. Type in text. JAWS reads the title bar for the application that was opened when we pressed ENTER on this file, which is Notepad. I recommend that you reopen and read this file later, but we'll close it now by pressing ALT+F4. Alt F4. ENU. List view. Keystrokes dot txt. Eight of eight. To move to items, use the arrow keys. We’ve returned to Windows Explorer, and JAWS announced the location in our title bar and also read the name of the file that is selected within the list view, which is KEYSTROKES.txt. The default view setting for your list view in Windows Explorer is large icons, which is arranged in columns and rows. We are going to change this to a detailed list that will arrange our view in one vertical list. We can do this in the view menu. I’m going to press the key combination ALT plus V to move to the view menu. ALT V. Menu active. Tool bar sub-menu. To move through items, press UP or DOWN ARROW. T. I’m going to press the letter D to move to and select the Detailed list menu item. D. Leaving menus. KEYSTROKES dot txt. Now we’ve changed our list view to a detailed list and we can navigate this list view by pressing our up and down arrow keys. The benefit to having a detailed list is that when you want to hear information about the selected list view item, you can press the JAWS key combination INSERT+UP ARROW to hear information about that list view item. I’m going to press INSERT+UP ARROW now. KEYSTROKES dot txt, 7.44 KB text document 8 slash 3 slash 01 6:40:30 PM. Eight of eight. We heard the size of that particular file, the type of file, which is a text document, and the date and time this file was modified. I would like to show you how to select contiguous and non-contiguous files and perform some basic editing, such as cut, copy, and paste. To do this, let's move to the beginning of this list view by pressing the HOME key. HOME. Authorization key guide dot doc. This file is currently selected, but if we weren’t sure, we could press the JAWS key combination SHIFT+INSERT+DOWN ARROW to hear the selected text. I’ll press this key combination now. Selected text is Authorization key guide dot doc. Since this file is selected, we could delete, rename, cut, or copy this file. I’m going to demonstrate how to select the first six files in this list view. When we select files that are right next to each other, we call that a contiguous group of files. Because the first file is already selected, we can select the next file by pressing the SHIFT + DOWN ARROW key. When I do this key combination, I’m going to hold down the SHIFT key until I’m finished making the selection. I'll do that now. Authorization key guide dot txt. Selected. Now we have two files selected. JAWS announced the new file that was selected. I’m going to press the DOWN ARROW key on my numeric keypad again. Remember, my SHIFT key is still being held down. JavaInstallWithJAWS dot doc. Selected. Now three files are selected. Still holding down my SHIFT key, I’m going to press down arrow three more times. JavaInstallWithJAWS dot txt. Selected. JAWS Quick Start Guide 5.02.01 dot doc. Selected. JAWS Quick Start Guide 5.02.01 dot txt. Selected. Now I’m going to release my Shift key and my down arrow key and I’m going to press the key combination to hear selected text, which is SHIFT+INSERT+DOWN ARROW. Selected text is Authorization key guide dot doc. Authorization key guide dot txt. JavaInstallWithJAWS dot doc. JavaInstallWithJAWS dot txt. JAWS Quick Start Guide 5.02.01 dot doc. JAWS Quick Start Guide 5.02.01 dot txt. At this point, all these files are selected, and I could delete them, copy them to another location, or remove them from the ENU folder and paste them in another location. When I was selecting these files, I held down my SHIFT key so that I could select them. It’s important to note that if you let go of your shift key and press any of your arrow keys, you will unselect the files. I’m going to copy these selected items by pressing the key combination CONTROL + C. Copy selected text to clipboard. The items are still selected within my list view, but a copy of those items has been placed on my clipboard until I’m ready to retrieve them. I want to paste a copy of these items in the same level as the ENU folder, which is back one level. To move back in the list view, you simply press the BACKSPACE key. I’m going to do that now. List view not selected. ENU file folder seven slash three slash zero zero two-eleven PM. One of one. To move to items, use the arrow keys. To paste items from your clipboard, you press the key combination CONTROL plus V as in Victor. I’m going to do that now. Pasted text from clipboard. Authorization key guide dot doc. Authorization key guide dot txt. JavaInstallWithJAWS dot doc. JavaInstallWithJAWS dot txt. JAWS Quick Start Guide 5.02.01 dot doc. JAWS Quick Start Guide 5.02.01 dot txt. Once the items are pasted from your clipboard, they are selected in the list view. You want to be careful that you don’t press a key, such as DELETE and accidentally delete these files, because they are selected. Also, the files we copied may not appear in the same order they were when we copied them. You can use a Windows keystroke, F5, to unselect these files and arrange them in order again. I’ll press F5 now. JAWS will remain silent. We can perform another type of selection, which is called a non-contiguous selection, that’s selecting files that are not next to each other within the list view. I’m at the top of this list view on the folder ENU. All right, I've decided that I want to select only those files that have the file extension txt. Since we’re on the folder called ENU I’ll press DOWN ARROW to move down to the next filename. Authorization Key Guide.doc This file is not a text file, so we’ll continue moving down the list. Authorization Key Guide dot txt This file does have a .txt extension, and it is selected by pressing the DOWN ARROW. Now, assuming that we don't remember whether the next file will have a .txt extension or not, we want to use the non-contiguous selection method. To select a non-contiguous group of files, we don’t press the SHIFT key; instead we press the CONTROL key, and hold it down while arrowing. To include a file in our selection, we press the SPACEBAR while keeping that CONTROL key held down. Let's try this. I'm pressing CONTROL + DOWN ARROW. Not selected, JavaInstallWithJAWS dot doc. Four of seven. We don't want to select this filename, so I'll press CONTROL + DOWN ARROW again. Not selected, JavaInstallWithJAWS dot txt. Five of seven. We want this file to be selected, so I'll press CONTROL+SPACEBAR now. CONTROL SPACE. JavaInstallWithJAWS dot txt. There should be one more text file in this list. Let's press CONTROL+DOWN ARROW to check it out. Not selected, Authorization Key Guide dot txt. Six of seven. And I’ll press DOWN ARROW one more time. We land on Authorization Key Guide dot txt. I’ll press SPACEBAR to select this final file. Good, we're finished with selecting our noncontiguous files. If you want to be sure that you only have three files selected at this point, you can release the CONTROL key and press INSERT + NUM PAD THREE. Three object(s) selected, 66.0 KB, My Computer. Of course, you could have also pressed the "hear selected text" command, SHIFT+INSERT+DOWN ARROW, as we did before. I’ll press this key combination now. For now we'll leave these files selected, and practice moving them to a new folder that we're going to create. First, I’m going to cut these items to my clipboard by pressing CONTROL + X. Cut text. Authorization Key Guide dot txt. JavaInstallWithJAWS dot txt. JAWS Quick Start Guide 5.02.01.txt. Next, we need to create a new folder where we can paste these two files. To do this, press ALT plus F to activate your file menu. Alt F. Menu active. Open. To move through items, press UP or DOWN ARROW. O. JAWS reads the first menu item in this file menu, which is “open”. Technically, since the items that I’ve just cut are still selected, the computer wants to know if I want to open those items. We obviously don't want to do this, so I’m going to press the letter N as in “new” to move to and open the new sub-menu. N. New N. Folder F. JAWS announced the first menu item in this sub-menu, which is folder. We'll press ENTER to choose this option. ENTER. Leaving menus. New folder edit. Type in text. We’re now in an edit field that will allow us to name this folder. If we press ENTER, our folder would have the name "New Folder." I’m going to name my new folder “text files.” Since the current folder name is selected, I can just start typing, and it will be erased. T-e-x-t space f-i-l-e-s. And now I’ll press ENTER. ENTER. List view. Text Files. Eight of eight. To move through items press the arrow keys. Our new folder has just been created and it is selected. I want to open this folder and paste the items that are on my clipboard in its list view. I’m going to press ENTER now to open the folder “text files”. ENTER. List view. Zero items. To move to items, use the arrow keys. Finally, we're ready to paste the three files we're moving. Press CONTROL + V. Pasted text from clipboard. JAWS Quick Start Guide 5.02.01.txt. JavaInstallWithJAWS dot txt. Authorization Key guide dot txt. And, with that, we have completed the process of moving these files. For our next exercise, let's practice renaming a folder. Actually, a file could be renamed using this same procedure, but we'll rename the Text Files folder we've just created. Don't forget that you're inside the Text Files folder at the moment. The first thing I'm going to do is press BACKSPACE, which will back me up one level. List view. Not selected ENU file folder seven slash three slash zero zero two-eleven PM. One of five. To move to items, use the arrow keys. I’m going to press the letter T to move to our new folder called text files. T. Text files. To rename a folder or file, press the F2 key once its name is selected. Pressing T moved us to the Text Files folder, so we're ready to press F2. I’ll press F2 now. F2. Edit text files. Type in text. As before, the folder “Text Files” is currently selected, so if I type a new name, I will be typing over the previous folder name. I’m going to type a new name called “Text Manuals,” and then press ENTER. T-e-x-t space M-a-n-u-a-l-s. ENTER. List view. Text Manuals file folder seven slash three slash zero zero three fifty-six PM. Two of five. To move to items, use the arrow keys. Our next topic involves deleting files and folders. You can delete a folder or a file when the item is selected by pressing the DELETE key. When you delete a folder, you delete all the items that are contained within that folder, such as other sub-folders and files, so you want to be careful when you delete folders and check first what is inside of them. We know that our Text Manual folder has three text files in it. If we delete this folder, we’re not deleting those original manuals that we found earlier, because we copied them at that point. So basically the text files in here are just a duplication of the ones that already exist. I’m going to press my DELETE key now. Confirm folder delete dialog. Are you sure you want to remove the folder apostrophe Text Manuals apostrophe and move all its contents to the Recycle Bin question? Yes button. To activate, press SPACEBAR. ALT+Y. A dialog box appeared on our screen. This is a great safety feature in Windows Explorer because if you accidentally delete an item, you can stop at this point and tab to the “no” button and press ENTER to cancel this operation. The default button in this dialog is the “yes” button, so if I press ENTER now, the Text Manuals folder is sent to the Recycle Bin. I’m going to press ENTER to send these items to the Recycle Bin. ENTER. List view. Not selected ENU. File folder seven slash three slash zero zero two-eleven PM. One of four. To move to items, use the arrow keys. We’ve returned to the list view and our Text Manuals folder is now placed in our Recycle Bin. If I didn’t mean to press the ENTER key, I could simply perform the Windows Undo command, CONTROL + Z, which would bring back that Text Manuals folder. I'm not going to press CONTROL + Z now though, because our next lesson will examine the Recycle Bin, and I'd like the Text Manuals folder to still be there. So, if you practice undoing the delete operation we just performed, please make sure you delete this folder again before continuing on to the next lesson. When you are finished using Windows Explorer, you may use the standard Windows command ALT+F4 to close Windows Explorer and exit. End of "An Introduction to Windows, Section Two."