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

3. 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.

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

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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.

9. Create a Folder in 5 Easy Steps 1.Click “File“ at the top left of your screen. 2.Point to “New” and a submenu appears. 3.Click on “Folder” 4.A folder icon appears with the file name “New Folder” highlighted in blue. You can just start typing the name of the folder here. 5.Hit the enter key after you have typed the name of your folder. Congratulations!!! You have now created a folder.

10. 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.

11. 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 %,., !

12. 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.”

13. 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.