Understand the Folder Structure

Quick reference

• 00:04 File Explorer is the beating heart of the Windows 11 operating system.
• 00:09 It's where all our files, folders, documents, spreadsheets, images, and
• 00:13 other items are stored.
• 00:15 A file explorer is one of those things that you're going to find yourself using
• 00:19 on a daily basis.
• 00:20 So I would highly recommend if you don't already have it pinned to the taskbar,
• 00:24 that you go into the Start menu.
• 00:26 Find File Explorer, and then pin it so it's easy for you to access.
• 00:31 I already have mine pinned, so I'm not going to do that, but
• 00:34 that is my recommendation.
• 00:35 So let's fire up File Explorer and take a look.
• 00:39 Now File Explorer is essentially a navigation system, it lets us find
• 00:43 all of the files that we have stored in different folders on our PC.
• 00:48 In fact we can find absolutely everything that we have installed on our PC
• 00:52 including things like applications and system files, in File Explorer.
• 00:57 So it's really important that you understand how File Explorer works, and
• 01:01 how you can use it in different ways.
• 01:03 Now if you're not that familiar with File Explorer,
• 01:06 I will say that in Windows 11 it does look quite a bit different to Windows 10.
• 01:10 In Windows 10 we didn't have this kind of menu system running across the top.
• 01:15 So let's first start out by taking a look at the different parts of File Explorer so
• 01:19 we understand what we're looking at.
• 01:21 Now all the way over on the left hand side,
• 01:23 this is where we kind of have our navigation area.
• 01:25 You can see the top one here is Quick access if I expand this by clicking on
• 01:29 the arrow.
• 01:30 You can see anything that I've added into this Quick access area.
• 01:34 Now Quick access will show folders that you've been into recently so
• 01:37 like these ones at the bottom.
• 01:39 But it will also show folders that you have pinned to this area.
• 01:43 Notice all of these folders that have drawing pin icons next to them,
• 01:47 have been pinned to Quick access.
• 01:49 And we can pin any folder to Quick access to make it easy for us to find.
• 01:55 So instead of browsing through lots of different folders and subfolders.
• 01:58 If it's a folder that we use often,
• 02:00 we might as well pin it to our Quick access menu.
• 02:03 For example if I expand let's just expand OneDrive for a moment.
• 02:08 If I use the pictures folder in my OneDrive all the time, I could right
• 02:13 click, and notice in the right click menu, I have pin to Quick access.
• 02:18 If I click this it's going to put it up in this Quick access area and
• 02:21 you can see there it is, Pictures.
• 02:24 If I want to unpin it, I can right click, and
• 02:27 Unpin from Quick access to put it back.
• 02:30 Now I like to keep my Quick access area fairly clean I just like to have
• 02:34 the folders that I want to pin in this area.
• 02:37 I don't particularly like having folders in here as well that I've recently
• 02:42 accessed, so we can change that.
• 02:44 If we right click on the Quick access menu and
• 02:47 go to Show more options, and then Options again.
• 02:51 On this general tab right at the bottom we can choose,
• 02:54 what we want to show in Quick access.
• 02:57 So currently I'm showing recently used files and
• 03:00 frequently used folders, so I'm going to untick both of those, click on Ok.
• 03:04 And you can now see my Quick access area is just showing the folders,
• 03:09 that I've pinned to Quick access.
• 03:11 So for me, that's a lot cleaner looking but again, I'll leave it up to you.
• 03:16 Now a couple of important things about File Explorer,
• 03:19 let's just collapse up all of our folders and click on this PC.
• 03:23 So when we click on this PC it's going to show us all
• 03:26 of the standard folders that we have in File Explorer.
• 03:30 That are created for us, when we sign into Windows 11.
• 03:33 And once again there is a little bit of a change here between Windows 11 and
• 03:37 Windows 10.
• 03:37 In the older version or in the predecessor version Windows 10,
• 03:41 all of these standard folders were the same color that same yellow folder color.
• 03:46 Now they've changed the color to make them a little bit easier to see and
• 03:50 differentiate from the others.
• 03:52 So these are the standard folders that we always have, Desktop, Documents,
• 03:57 Downloads, Videos, Pictures and Music.
• 04:00 And I would highly recommend when you are saving files to your PC.
• 04:04 To try and work within the structure that we already have within File Explorer.
• 04:09 So put your documents in the Documents folder,
• 04:12 remember you can always create subfolders to organize them a little bit further.
• 04:16 But in general, working with the current structure instead of working against it,
• 04:21 is going to work out a lot better for you.
• 04:23 Also notice underneath we can see any devices that we have connected, and
• 04:27 also any drives.
• 04:28 So currently I just have a C drive on my PC, and
• 04:32 it's showing me how much space I have left.
• 04:35 So I can see I'm sort of getting fairly close to filling up my drive,
• 04:38 so I'm probably going to want to delete some files.
• 04:40 Now if I decided that I wanted to plug something into my system, so
• 04:44 maybe I want to store some files off on an external hard drive.
• 04:48 When I plug it in I'm going to see,
• 04:50 that hard drive in this Devices and drives section.
• 04:54 And anything in here any drive will be given a letter, and
• 04:58 in general the standard one on your PC is called the C drive.
• 05:02 And if you plug in something like an external hard drive,
• 05:05 that will normally be given a letter like D or maybe even E.
• 05:09 Now if I want to go into any of these folders for
• 05:11 example Documents I can simply double click, and it's going to take me in there.
• 05:15 And you can see that I have some subfolders in here already.
• 05:18 Now I haven't created any of these subfolders they're ones that have been
• 05:23 created automatically based on what I've been doing on my PC.
• 05:26 For example, I'm recording videos right now, and so
• 05:29 I have a folder here called Camtasia.
• 05:31 Which is the software that I use to record these videos, and if I double click,
• 05:36 I can see here are all my video files.
• 05:38 So the point I'm trying to make here is that I didn't actually physically create
• 05:41 this folder, it was created automatically.
• 05:44 So if you jump into something like Documents and
• 05:47 you see folders in there already, don't worry too much.
• 05:50 Nothing's wrong, they're just folders that the system needs in order to work.
• 05:54 If we double click on the Desktop folder this is going to show us any items that we
• 05:58 have on our desktop.
• 05:59 Now currently the only thing I have on here is the recycle bin.
• 06:03 Now the recycle bin folder I guess you could call it,
• 06:06 doesn't actually show when you click on Desktop in File Explorer.
• 06:10 If I had another folder in here so
• 06:12 I can very quickly create a folder on my Desktop.
• 06:15 You can see then that reflects within the File Explorer structure.
• 06:19 If I delete this out, it's also going to delete it out from the actual folder.
• 06:24 So that's all the Desktop really is one big folder,
• 06:27 another area where we can store our files.
• 06:29 Now when we do start drilling down into different folders and
• 06:32 subfolders let's use the example of My Documents again.
• 06:35 Let's go in and I'm going to open Camtasia,
• 06:38 notice just above it's building what we call a breadcrumb trail.
• 06:41 So it's showing us the exact path we've taken to get to these particular files.
• 06:46 If I want to go back a level I can simply click on the relevant item in
• 06:50 the breadcrumb trail, to go back to that specific folder.
• 06:54 So really simple to navigate.
• 06:56 We can also expand this PC at the side here, and
• 06:59 we can drill down through the different folders in that way as well.
• 07:03 Now the final point to mention here when it comes to the C drive.
• 07:06 If we double click on this, it's going to show us a whole bunch of folders,
• 07:11 and none of these I created myself.
• 07:13 Because what you'll find is the C drive houses,
• 07:17 a lot of the system files that Windows 11 needs to work.
• 07:20 And I would highly recommend that you don't mess around in here too much.
• 07:23 Don't start deleting things out because you might find that you delete a file
• 07:27 that's really important for your system, and things start to break.
• 07:31 So in general I don't tend to come in here too much.
• 07:34 However there is one folder that you should be aware of, and
• 07:38 that is the Users folder just here.
• 07:40 If we double click on this it's going to show all of the people that have
• 07:44 an account set up on this PC.
• 07:46 So I have a couple of different accounts I have,
• 07:49 one underneath my name, and one underneath cell_.
• 07:52 Because I'm currently logged into my PC under my account called cell mates.
• 07:57 Now on your PC if this is a home system,
• 08:00 you're going to see a folder with your name on it basically I have two.
• 08:04 So if I double click on cell_, this is what we call our home folder, and
• 08:08 this is where all of our personal files and folders are stored.
• 08:12 So you can see in there things like Documents, Desktop, Music,
• 08:16 I've got my OneDrive account in there as well and my Pictures.
• 08:19 And every single user on this PC will have their own home folder.
• 08:23 So if all the members of your family have an account on this PC,
• 08:26 you're going to see all the different names for people down here.
• 08:30 Now if I try and access somebody else's home folder so that I can see their files.
• 08:34 For example if I double click on deb_a, it's going to tell me that I don't
• 08:38 currently have permissions to access that folder.
• 08:40 And that's because I'm not currently logged in underneath this account,
• 08:44 the only folder I can access is this one just here.
• 08:47 So hopefully that puts your mind at rest a little bit if you have lots of people
• 08:51 sharing one PC.
• 08:52 You can't just simply open up their folder, and
• 08:55 start looking through all of their files.

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