08 Using Windows Explorer This learning module is entitled, “Using Windows Explorer.” This lesson will introduce you to the Windows Explorer file management program provided with the Windows XP operating system. 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 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. JAWS says: 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. JAWS says: Alt Space. Menu active. Restore grayed. To move through items, press UP or DOWN ARROW. R. I’m going to press the access key x to maximize this window. JAWS says: 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. jaws says: tab List view… 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. jaws says: tab. Address edit combo… 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. jaws says: 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 XP, 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 XP. jaws says: 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, jaws says: 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. jaws says: 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, but is not there in earlier versions. So if you press the tab key repeatedly, you will eventually end up where you started. Pressing shift tab will move you backwards in the same fashion. 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 xxx 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 will press the home key to move to the Desktop. jaws says: 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. jaws says: xxx items. When you arrive at My Computer again, JAWS will announce 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. jaws says: 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. jaws says: tab. Cancel button. To activate, press SPACEBAR. This is the only other button in this dialog box. I'll press SPACEBAR now. jaws says: 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. jaws says: 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. jaws says: 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. jaws says: Hard-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 xx folder. J. Level three. JAWSxx closed. xx of xx. 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. jaws says: JAWSxx opened. xx 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. jaws says: 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. jaws says: ENTER. List view 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 type of file it is. 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 text file called, "KEYSTROKES." 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. jaws says: K. Keystrokes. jaws says: K. Keystrokes. I heard the word keystrokes twice. This is because there are actually two files here. One is a Word document and one is a text document. In a few moments I’ll show you how to turn on what’s called known file extensions. When we do, these lines will read keystrokes dot doc and keystrokes dot txt respectively. If you already have these known file types turned on, you should have heard this. However, by default in Windows XP, known file types are turned off. In order to get around this for the time being, you can use the jaws keystroke to read the current line, insert up arrow, to find out which is the word file and which is the text file. I’m going to press up arrow to go to the first keystrokes file. jaws says: keystrokes. Now, I’ll press insert up arrow, the say line command, to hear more information about this file. jaws says: keystrokes, etc. Next, I’ll press down arrow to move to the second keystrokes file. jaws says: keystrokes. And again, I’ll press the say line command, insert up arrow. jaws says: keystrokes, etc. Because everyone might not have Microsoft Word installed on his or her computer, we'll use the standard text file version of this file." Now to open a file within the list view, simply press your ENTER key. jaws says: ENTER. Keystrokes, 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. jaws says: Alt F4. ENU. List view. Keystrokes. one of six. 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 text file. 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. jaws says: 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. jaws says: D. Leaving menus. KEYSTROKES. 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. jaws says: KEYSTROKES …. We heard the size of that particular file, the type of file, which is a text document, and so on. Some of you may have heard the file name and then the word doc or txt. If that is the case, you already have known file types turned on in Windows Explorer. For those of you who did not hear the file name extensions, here is how to turn them on. Go to the tools menu by pressing alt+t. Choose folder options. You land on the general tab page of a multi level tab dialog box. Press control+tab to move to the next page, the view page, and press the tab key two times. You will be in a tree view of items. Press the down arrow until you come to the checkbox called “hide extensions for known file types---on”. Press the spacebar to uncheck this checkbox. Press the tab key twice and you should land on the OK button. Press the spacebar to save your changes and close this dialog box. Now go back to those files and demonstrate how they read by pressing up and down arrow. Next, 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. jaws says: HOME. Authorization key guide... 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. jaws says: Selected text is Authorization key guide... Since this file is selected, we could delete, rename, cut, or copy this file. I’m going to demonstrate how to select the first four 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. jaws says: Authorization key guide …. 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. jaws says: JAWS Quick Start Guide (doc version)… Now three files are selected. Still holding down my SHIFT key, I’m going to press down arrow one more time. jaws says: JAWS Quick Start Guide (text version)… 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. jaws says: Selected text is … At this point, all these files are selected, and I could delete them, copy them to another location, or cut 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. jaws says: 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. jaws says: List view not selected. ENU file folder …. To paste items from your clipboard, you press the key combination CONTROL plus V as in Victor. I’m going to do that now. jaws says: Pasted text from clipboard... 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 are text documents. Since we’re on the folder called ENU I’ll press DOWN ARROW to move down to the next filename. jaws says: Authorization Key Guide. Microsoft Word document. This file is not a text file, so we’ll continue moving down the list. jaws says: Authorization Key Guide text document This file is a text file, and it is selected by pressing the DOWN ARROW. Now, assuming that we don't remember whether the next file will be a text file 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. jaws says Not selected, JAWS Quick Start Guide Microsoft Word document. We don't want to select this filename, so I'll press CONTROL + DOWN ARROW again. jaws says: Not selected, JAWS Quick Start Guide. text document. We want this file to be selected, so I'll press CONTROL+SPACEBAR now. jaws says: CONTROL SPACE. JAWS Quick Start Guide selected. There should be one more text file in this list. Let's press CONTROL+DOWN ARROW to check it out. jaws says: Not selected, Keystrokes Microsoft Word document. And I’ll press DOWN ARROW one more time. We land on Keystrokes text document. 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 to read the status line down at the bottom of the Windows Explorer window. jaws says: Three object(s) selected…. Of course, you could have also pressed the "read selected text" command, SHIFT+INSERT+DOWN ARROW, as we did before. I’ll press this key combination now. jaws says: selected text is… 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 copy these items to my clipboard by pressing CONTROL + C. jaws says: Cut text… Next, we need to create a new folder where we can paste these two files. To do this, first, press shift tab to move back to the tree view. Then press up arrow a few times until you land back on the folder called JAWSxx. Next, press alt f to open the file menu. jaws says: Alt F. Menu active. New. JAWS reads the first menu item in this file menu, which is “new”. Press your right arrow to open the “new” sub-menu. jaws says: 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. jaws says: 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. jaws says: ENTER. List view. Text Files. 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”. jaws says: 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. jaws says: Pasted text from clipboard... 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. jaws says: List view... I’m going to press the letter T to move to our new folder called text files. jaws says: T. Text files. If you did not land on the folder called text files, press the letter t again if needed until you do. 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. jaws says: 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. jaws says: ENTER. List view. Text Manuals file folder… 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. jaws says: 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. jaws says: ENTER. List view. 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 08 using windows explorer