File Management

1. File Management It’s a Window’s Thing

2. The File Cabinet The Computer is the entire cabinet and each folder is a drawer. Just like file cabinets, the drawers are named based on what is stored in them. Each drive on a computer represents a drawer in a filing cabinet.

3. GRCC’s File Navigation Open Window Explorer located on the tray on your desktop. (It looks like a stack of file folders.)

4. What’s in the Drawers? • Drive C or the Local Disk is where you program files are stored. This is what makes your computer and programs run. • Drive H (Student Drive ) is an area used by instructors to share files with students. Students can only open files from this location.

5. The J: Drive • The J drive or the drive with your name. This is where you are able to save your files/documents. • The college gives every student a drive to use for this person. The size of this drive is limited and you should be aware of how much space is available to you. • Once your college career is complete, the college removes this drive and all of its contents to make room for other students.

6. Organization • Organization is key to finding your document quickly and easily. • We’ve talked about the drawers of the filing cabinet and what should go in them. Now let’s take a look at your files and folders inside your J drive

7. Organize???? • You can save your documents inside of a folder or individually as files. • To keep things better organized and easier to find, it is recommended that you make specific folders. For example, you can create a folder named CO120 to save all of your work for this class.

8. Create a Folder in 5 Easy Steps • Click “File“at the top left ofyour screen. • Point to “New” and a submenu appears. • Click on “Folder” • A folder icon appears with the file name “New Folder” highlighted in blue. You can just start typing the name of the folder here. • Hit the enter key after you have typed the name of your folder. • Congratulations!!! You have now created a folder.

9. Notes! • You can create folders within folders. • Don’t want to get carried away with this as you will then spend a lot of time trying to access for folder and or file you are looking for. • File names, like folder names, should be unique to what the document is (i.e. resume, cover letter, etc.) • You should be able to recognize the file by its name and know what it is by looking at it.

10. Do’s and Don’ts for Naming Folders and Files • Short and sweet is a good thing to keep in mind. • Can contain a combination of upper- and lowercase letters, numbers and spaces. • Should be descriptive but not long (i.e. CO101, CO120, etc.). You should be able to recognize the folder by its name. • No special characters such as %, ., !

11. Example of Good File Management • In the left column, we can see that we are looking at the J drive. • Inside the J drive are files labeled accordingly. We will look at the CO 120 folder specifically. • Inside the CO 120 folder is a folder named CO120 Fall 2011 Datafiles.”

12. Example of Good File Management (Cont.) • Inside this folder there are folders containing folders and documents needed for the assignments for this class. • A path to your files is located at the top of the window on the right of the screen.