Windows and other OS Tips

Selecting only a few files

When you want to work with a large number of files (copy, move, delete) in Windows Explorer, it can be a hassle to hold down control and pick and choose all the files you want to work with.

This is a cool way to speed things up when the wanted files far outnumber the unwanted files.

Instead of holding down the Control key and clicking on all the files you want, select the files you don’t want. Then go to the Edit menu and click on "Invert Selection".

This will switch the highlighted files with the unhighlighted. Also a great party trick.

Windows XP lets you view your files in many new ways. Windows ME and 2000 also let you add fields to view beyond Name, Size, Type and Date Modified.

You just click View and then Choose Details or Choose Columns and then you can check or un-check whatever you want for that folder.

For example, if the folder contains your MP3 music files, you may want to add Artist, Album Title, Duration and Track Number to the view.

One of the coolest new views in Windows XP is the Show in Groups option. Click on View and then Arrange Icons By and choose Show in Groups. Then the icons will be arranged in order depending on what sort criteria you have selcetd.

For example, if you have By Name selected, the files will be grouped from A to Z. If you chose By Date, they will be grouped by names like Yesterday, Last Week, Last Month and so on.

If you Sort by Size, it will group by Tiny, Medium, Large, etc.

Your feedback has told us that this is our most useful tip!

This seems to really freak people out. Certain types of files (Word Docs, MP3s, Excel Spreadsheets, etc) have certain file extensions in their name (.DOC, .MP3, .XLS, etc.)

When you launch a program from Explorer (by clicking on the name), Windows looks in its handy-dandy listing of File Associations to see what program to open it with.

So when you click on meeting.doc, Windows knows to open Word and then that document inside it. When you install some programs they make themselves the default application for files of types that they can process - how rude!

You can, of course, change them back and make other changes by selecting Tools - Folder Options and File Types from Explorer. Kind of a kludge though.

But here's the tip. If you normally open a file (say a jpg image) from a certain program (say ACDC) but this time you want to open it from another (say Photoshop Elements) you can hold down the Shift key and right-click on the file.

Then select Open With and choose the application you want.

In Windows ME, 2000 and XP it's even easier. Just right-click and choose Open With. If you select Properties and then Change, you can change the default file associations if you want. Sweet!

This works for most applications but not all.

When you want to tell a program a default location to save its files (and there is not a nice menu option like in Office to do so) you can right-click on the program's shortcut icon and choose Properties.

Click on the Shortcut tab and put the desired folder in the Start In field. Voila!

Sometimes older tools and techniques work better than newer, fancier things. To me, the best way to copy only the files that have changed since the last copy operation is with an old DOS command - XCOPY.

This is useful if you want to keep your data in synch between your home and work PC for example. You don't want to have to copy everything each time - just the files that have changed or are new.

If you go to a command prompt (Start - programs - MS-Dos Prompt or Start - Programs - Accessories - Command Prompt in later Windows versions) type in XCOPY /? | More and then press Enter.

This will show you all the options you can choose with the Xcopy command. The last part of the command (| More) makes the display pause after every screenful so you can read it all. The "|" character is usually the shift part of the "\" key on your keyboard.

In general you want to XCOPY from a source to a destination and the optional switches tell what should be copied.

So if I keep my calendar in a folder called Calendar, I can keep it in synch at home and work by copying the changes to a zip drive (or floppy or whatever) by typing in:

XCOPY C:\CALENDAR\*.* z:\calendar /s /y /d

The first part of the command says to copy all files in the Calendar folder to the Calendar folder on my other drive that I'll call Z (zip, floppy, etc)

The /S tells it to copy subfolders too (except empty ones - use /E if you want empty folders too)

The /Y tells it not to prompt you that you are overwriting files with the same name.

The /D tells it to copy only those files that have a date newer than the date of the files already on the destination. You can specify a date such as /D:04-09-2003 but it default's to today's date.

Running that command gives me just the files that are new or changed and I have the same information at work, home and laptop.

XCellent!