Making Windows work for you. File Management at Gizmos, Inc: Toolkit: PC Workshop

Summary | Smart file management is the key to reducing cognitive load. Use Windows Explorer and a text editor for organizing, finding, copying, moving, and deleting files. Learn the basic skills of copying, saving, and pasting text and images.

My personal file management system: collaboration, research, web site management, and clutter. What should you do?

What is it?

Without putting too fine a point on it or in any way exaggerating, software is too expensive, is bloated with unnecessary features, and is hideously difficult to learn and use. We have to go up steep, frustrating learning curves to adjust to it.

Your answers will reveal your file management system. Some people take the path of least resistance and save everything into their My Documents folder. Others put everything into the same directory as one of their applications, like Word. Others put everything on their desktop. Still others haven't a clue where files go and use a workaround like Start | Find to navigate.

Your file management system is probably as personal and as characteristic of you as is the system by which you sort, store, and retrieve paper in your physical office. I'm most concerned that your system works for you rather than working against you. Or worse, that you are working for it.

I'm convinced that the main cause of computer problems and frustrations is people's faulty understanding of what's going on inside their computers. Most people have great difficulty trying to explain that in words. However, how they name, store, and manage files reveals much of their mental model. When I help others at their computers, I'm always interested in what I see and how people get around and where they put things. Most people do far more clicking than they need to and are far too passive about personalizing their PC's. That's what the P in PC stands for, after all.

On the other hand, when I look at how experienced users manage their files, I'm struck by how individual that process is. For example, my son knows a lot more about computers than I do. When David comes home, he can't find anything on my PC. He's always saying, "Where do you put ... ?" or "How do you have this set up?" And I don't even try to sit down at his PC unless he's there. I'd be asking for nothing but frustration and trouble.

When I'm looking at students' screens, I point out things that seem counter-productive and self-defeating. Mostly, what I'm trying to do is make you aware of how much control you have over the PC and how much you can make your life easier with some basic file management.

Best Bet!

skills

acquiring files by copying, moving, saving, renaming, deleting, and downloading text, images, and other file types

tools

Harvesting information

You acquire files by making them, of course, but also by loading them from a floppy or CD or other removable disk. In Windows Explorer with the folder list on the left and details view on the right, all of your drives are accessible. Navigate to the file you want on the A: drive for floppies or on the D: or E: drive for CDs.

After highlighting the file you want to move, you can drag it or you can copy-paste it via the standard buttons or via CTRL-C and CRTL-V. If the file is coming from a CD, you won't be able to move it. If it's coming from a floppy, I wouldn't recommend moving (cut-paste), either. Copy-paste leaves a backup on the floppy.

Tip | Never work with files on a floppy in your A: drive. Treat your floppy as you would a briefcase. Take everything out and put it on your desk. That is, copy all files onto your C: drive before you start to work with them.

Washing text

Sometimes you want to copy files from one program or application to another. A common example is copying text from a browser or word processor to a web page, that is, from Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Word to FrontPage.

Using the standard buttons or CTRL-C / CRTL-V will give the appearance of copying text, but will bring Microsoft's proprietary and unseen formatting code along with it. The unseen (hidden) part can create a file ten times the size it needs to be full of pesky formatting you can't get rid of.

The best technique is to wash the text first. You wash off the proprietary hidden formatting code by pasting into a text editor first and then copying again to FrontPage. At first, this seems unnecessary and time-consuming. If you don't do it, however, you'll find out that the resulting mess is very time-consuming.

step 1: In browser or Word window, highlight text - hold down left mouse button and drag.

step 2: Copy text to clipboard - CTRL-C (hold down CTRL key and press C).

step 3: Switch to text editor.

step 4: Paste text - CTRL-V (hold down CTRL key and press V).

step 5: Highlight text again or pull down Edit menu and select Select All.

step 6: Repeat step 2 by coping text to clipboard.

step 7: Switch to FrontPage.

step 8: Repeat step 4 by pasting text.

Some new Internet users may not understand exactly what is meant when they see the phrase "cut and paste."

Downloading files from the Internet

On the Internet, your research is a process of exploring and discovering. Everything you look at can go into one of three groups: useless, useful, and not sure. Harvest everything in the latter two groups.

Note | Fair use provisions of the copyright laws let you harvest almost anything for your personal use. As long as you credit it, you can use it for school, too.

Your email client may have a fancy file management system of its own. It will also have a Save As .. option, probably on the File pull-down menu, producing something that looks like the screen shot on the right.

Going across the top row starting from the middle, the pull-down Save in menu will give you access to your whole computer. If the next button is yellow (not grayed-out), it will jump you up a level in the hierarchical tree. The blue button will take you directly to your desktop, that is, it will display your C:\WINDOWS\Desktop folder. The next yellow button will make a new folder in the currently displayed folder. The two blue buttons on the right will give you either list or details view.

If you haven't turned off your tooltips, you can hover over each of those buttons to remind you. An email is a simple text file, so there's no realistic way to save it except as a simple text file. When you type in the file name, you can add the extension .txt or select it from the Save as type pull-down menu. By selecting a file type, you will see listed all the rest of that type of file in the folder. Clicking on one will make it appear in the File name box, which could save you a few keystrokes.

step 1: In your text editor's (ex: email client or Notepad) window, click File then Save as ...

step 2: In the dialog box, pull down the Save in: list and select Desktop at the top.

step 3: In Save as type: make sure it says All Files(*.*).

step 4: In File name: type in the filename and extension that you want.

step 5: Click Save or press Return.

an email attachment

Your email client will have some way of indicating that the email comes with an attachment. The attachment will be a separate file, often in a format that wouldn't display properly in an email, which is a simple text file. Sometimes the attachment will be compressed as a .zip file. When you become aware of the attachment, it is sitting in your ISP's mail server.

You will click to initiate the download from your ISP. You may first the see Save As window above. Beware of viruses.

If the attachment is in a specific format, such as an Excel .xls file or a image .jpg, you will need a specific software program to open it.

a web page

When I'm pressed for time, which is often, I harvest whatever interests me and drop it into a folder on my desktop.

If you are using AOL's browser, please stop. Use Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Netscape's browser. Use AOL only to get online; then ignore it and go about your business. Learn more.

the whole web page

step 1: Pull down Internet Explorer's File menu and choose Save As ...

step 2: Navigate to the folder where it makes sense to store it.

step 3: Save the page; perhaps rename the file to help remember why you saved it.

The web page will save as an .htm file, except it will have a file name that's the same as its title instead of its original file name on the server. The images, which may have been stored all over the original server, will be in a folder of the same name as the .htm file. All of the file's link tags will be changed so that the page will display with integrity off-line.

If you have already logged off and want to retrieve a page you saw earlier, use Windows Explorer to navigate your C:\WINDOWS\Temporary Internet Files folders. You may find thousands of files in that folder, so note that in Details view, you can sort by time last accessed.

an image

step 1: Hover the cursor over an image and right-click.

step 2: Select Save Picture As .. (IE) or Save Image As .. (NN).

step 3: Go to step 2 under Save file above.

a passage of the text

step 1: Open a text editor such as NotePad or NoteTab.

step 2: In the browser, copy (highlight; CTRL C) the URL.

step 3: In the text editor, paste (place cursor; CTRL V) the URL into a text file.

step 4: Back in the browser, copy (highlight; CTRL C) a passage.

step 5: Back in the same text editor, paste (place cursor; CTRL V) the passage under the URL from step 3.

You might also add a note. See the detailed example below. Much of the course material on Ricci Street is like this, sometimes called annotated links.

Of course, there's a step 6: Save the file. That's the tricky part. You have to answer two questions: what are you going to name it and where are you going to save it?

The HTML source code - "view source"

option 1: pull down the View menu and select Source
option 2: right click in an open area (neither text nor graphics) and select View Source

Sometimes when you right click, there is no View Source option available. If so, here are two tricks:

1) In Internet Explorer's Address field, enter: "view-source:[URL]" (without the quotes). Replace the [URL] variable with the full Web address of the page in question.

2) Enter a Web address in the Open File dialog of any program. Fire up Notepad, click File | Open and enter a full URL (including the obligatory "http colon slash slash").

A web page is a simple text file, so it will display in Notepad. (You may have to copy and paste from older Netscape browsers into Notepad.) Save it as you did email above.

another file stored on an Internet site

A machine connected to the Internet can contain almost any file. You can access the file through your browser when you click on a link in a web page or you can use FTP (file transfer protocol) software, which is the only way to upload or publish your own files to the Internet.

While your browser may give you access to the file, it will be able to display only text files, some Word .doc and Excel .xls files, and those other files such as Flash .swf files for which you have the appropriate plug-in.

For any other files, the browser will prompt a download by asking where you want to save it. You can right-click on any link to any file and choose Save Target As... to also see the Save As window explained above.

Depending on the type of file, how it was linked, and your security settings, you may get a prompt or a warning first. If you are using a third-party download manager such as Real Download, it will give you yet another range of options.

Tip | To show file extensions, right-click on My Computer and select Explore. In Windows Explorer, select View | Folder Options | View. Make sure that Show all files is selected and that Hide file extensions for known file types is not selected.

Web log example

Let's say I am researching gizmos for the office of the future. I run across a site that's selling a nifty computerized highlighter. I open NoteTab to a new page. Into it, I copy and paste (select passage, CTRL-C, CTRL-V) the largest words on the page (in yellow below but not in NoteTab). Then from the browser's address or location window, I copy and paste the URL (in green). The most interesting short paragraph summarizes the whole page, so I copy and paste that (in blue), adding quotation marks to remind myself. Finally, I make a couple of personal notes (in gray).

The C-Pen: How does it work?

www.cpen.com/product/cpen.shtml

"This is how C-Pen works. You hold it in your hand like a highlighter and mark the text you want to save. The digital camera then captures the text and saves it in C-Pen's memory. The text is transferred to your PC using infrared (IR) communication technique. Place C-Pen close to the infrared (IR) receiver of your PC, utilizing C-Pen as a normal drive. Cordless, with only a few buttons and a straightforward menu, C-Pen is simple to use."

note: Good pix on this page of CPen in action. Some material on the page also applies to category 4. Also, I don't like the page's background color.

Then I pull down the File menu and choose Save As .. I navigate to the directory file:\\\C:\WINDOWS\Desktop\rsthoods\gizmos\office\. I name the NoteTab text file highlighter.txt. Then I click save and return to the Web to look for more interesting things to harvest.

Please note that a web log is the basic structural unit of most Ricci Street pages. For example, the page about Internet Searching is largely a list of annotated links. Another example is the link at the top of this page, repeated here.

Some new Internet users may not understand exactly what is meant when they see the phrase "cut and paste."

The part in blue is Scott Clark's by-line as well as the source and date, usually copied and pasted as text from the page, and finally the excerpt in the box: "Some new Internet users ..." rather than in quotation marks.

Blogging

What if you could do this web logging, called blogging, in an organized, automated manner, and have your web log always available on a web page?

Well, you can join millions of people who keep active weblogs. Most use the Blogger publishing system. Learn more at the Gizmos, Inc., Toolkit section on webmaking, which has a page about weblogs.

Organizing files

By default, Windows 98 will put them in one of the My folders in the screen shots below.

While that keeps them from cluttering your desktop, it only moves the question one level away. Now that the files are in one of the My folders, what are you going to do with them? Into what folder are you going to save them?

If you have only a dozen files, that's not a hard question to answer. As you get more stuff, just like the stuff in your house, you're going to need a place to put it all. The number, size, and position of the rooms in your house or the drawers in your kitchen suggest certain answers. On your computer, you can have any number of files and folders of any size in any place. In two years, I've filled only a quarter of my C: drive, so don't worry about running out of space.

Making copies and moving them around is trivial. Finding files on your C: drive can be frustrating and time consuming.

At some point, you're going to need an organizing principle. That is, what will replace the rooms of your house? Some common organizing principles: time, project, course, job, purpose.

Because you nest folders in the hierarchical tree structure, you can mix these organizing principles. For example, you can have a final project folder in each course folder. You can nest all the course folders in a Fall 2001 folder. In addition, you can link to any file from any folder with a shortcut.

Ultimately, your overall organizing principle will be in your head and will be hard to articulate. It will be very associational. Naming this web site after Matteo Ricci and his memory palaces emphasizes my contention that our computers are brain tools and our file management systems best mimic and extend how our brains organize information.

To everything that we wish to remember, wrote Ricci, we should give an image; and to every one of these images we should assign a position where it can repose peacefully until we are ready to reclaim it by an act of memory. Since this entire memory system can work only if the images stay in the assigned positions and if we can instantly remember where we stored them, obviously it would seem easiest to rely on real locations which we know so well that we cannot ever forget them.

Placing objects in places to find them again is the very essence of how we navigate the real world. Memory palaces are maps of thoughts and are used to navigate the world of ideas just as cartographic maps are used to navigate the world of things. With our modern computer networks, the imaginary and the real world merge into a new place, the Internet.

The Art of Memory
by Janine Wong and Peter Storkerson
Visible Language, February 1997

Visualization is more than a matter of decoration, and it is important to understand visualization and particularly visual rhetoric as integral to communication content. ... Mixed media are not new, but in the new computer environment mixed media are becoming the rule. The Art of Memory indicates that visualization need not be looked at as something external or less important than text or words.

Doug's File Management System

On my desktop PC, I have a mirror of the whole Ricci Street web site so that I can work on it off-line. The folder (also called a directory) is named riccistreet. Within it are more folders (subdirectories) called dwares, gizmos, cybersea, port80, and riccigreen, mirroring the online structure.

Mirror is a common jargon term but it is slightly inaccurate because it implies a complementary image, a reversal. In fact, what I have is a complete duplicate copy.

Even if I'm online, I use that mirror to make changes. When a new page or revised page is ready, I FTP it to the Web site. (Sometimes it's not ready, but class is going to start in half an hour and I FTP it anyway.)

On my desktop PC's desktop -- how's that for a mixed metaphor? -- I also have a separate folder called rsthoods for Ricci Street neighborhoods. The folder structure mirrors the online web, but the content doesn't. The subdirectories are full of my harvested information: notes, saved Web pages, images, etc. I use those resources when I'm revising pages and making new ones. I discard much of it; what sounded interesting turns out to be less so.

Within the rsthoods folder are five folders I use so often that I keep shortcuts to them on my desktop. During a typical working day, I process dozens of email in both directions, I harvest a couple dozen things off the Web, and I write several new chunks of text.

Collaboration

Three of these five folders correspond to the people I work most closely with: 30-some students, half a dozen faculty members, and the proprietors of ClearLightStudio.com.

The Parkside Plaza folder has within it a folder for each of my students. All the email you send me, including the forms, goes in there along with my replies.

The Lantern Lane folder has a folder for each of the courses I'm teaching or helping other faculty develop.

The Arts Alley folder for Clear Light Studio, which you'll learn more about in MBA 604, is full of images.

Research

The other two of these five folders hold information about my main interests, webmaking and what's happening to our organizations and society.

This folder is Geek Central. It goes into more depth than the Toolkit on Ricci Street. Most of the information won't be relevant until the MBA program develops a concentration in e-commerce or information design. However, I need the information to make Ricci Street work and grow.

In this folder, I save things that help guide my thinking and that I will want to re-read and probably quote in email to my colleagues. These tend to be big-picture ideas and ways of thinking about what's driving and restraining the changes wrought by the Internet. For example, this morning, I saved into that folder a page about a research project at MIT called the New Economy Value Research Lab, "a fundamental rethinking of how economic value is created." The implications for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles are profound.

Clutter

In addition to the software toolkit I'm asking you to add to your communications center and workshop, I download utilities and demos and various other goodies that tempt me. Some of it is usable as is. Some has to be unzipped and installed. But the original downloads all go here where I can find them again.

I put must-read-now! stuff on the desktop. It often sits there for a long time before I get to it. When the desktop gets too cluttered, I drop it all into the harvest folder to get it out of my sight.

Every month, the server logs that I use to compile the traffic report come to anywhere from 50 - 70 megabytes. They have to get sorted and sliced and diced and posted and analyzed. In the new economy, server logs are a management metric you must learn more about.

Tip | These desktop folders can be searched for text. If you can remember a keyword, go to Start | Find | Files or Folders and enter the keyword in the Containing text box.

What should you do?

If you were to use a similar system, you would have a mirror of your Parkside Plaza web that you work on via FrontPage. You would also have a harvest folder where you stash stuff that is relevant but hasn't yet made its way onto a web page. As you start to develop your web, you'll find some natural divisions. Perhaps you want to divide your web into a school section and a personal section.

Within the school section, you'll find things piling up. Should you organize it by project? By course? By week? By topic?

Tip | Think organic growth. Don't try to conceive of your web before you make it. Let it grow and find its own shape.

Can't keep track of your documents, pictures, and music? Take advantage of Windows XP's extensive file management features.





Showroom information design	Playroom interactivity design	Research Lab usability design
Workbench web design applications	Kiln digital development process	Toolkit digital technology guide


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modified: February 4, 2003 by Douglas Anderson http://RicciStreet.net/gizmos/toolkit/operatingsystem/filemgmt.htm

Making Windows work for you

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