Customize File Explorer

Quick reference

• 00:03 In this lesson, we're going to take a look at some of the different ways that we can
• 00:08 customize File Explorer and
• 00:09 view our files, because we have quite a lot of options just here.
• 00:13 Now something we haven't spoken about in great detail currently is this ribbon that
• 00:18 we have running across the top.
• 00:19 Now I don't know if we refer to this as a ribbon, but
• 00:22 that's what I'm going to call it.
• 00:24 Now, this is different in Windows 11 to Windows 10.
• 00:28 A lot of the options that we now have on this ribbon,
• 00:31 we used to be able to find in the right-click menu.
• 00:34 And one that springs to mind is the Rename button.
• 00:37 If you wanted to rename a folder in Windows 10, you would right-click, and
• 00:42 you had a rename option.
• 00:44 Whereas now, that's been moved to this horizontal menu.
• 00:47 Now, one thing to notice, if we expand, let's expand this PC,
• 00:51 and I'm just going to go to the Downloads folder.
• 00:54 Now for example, here is an image of me.
• 00:57 If I right-click,
• 00:58 notice that we also have running across the top a lot of the same options that we
• 01:03 have on that main menu bar running across the top of the main File Explorer window.
• 01:08 So this is where we're going to find things like Cut, Copy,
• 01:13 Rename, Share, and Delete.
• 01:15 So just be aware of that.
• 01:17 Now if you are missing the old school menu, remember, we can still access it by
• 01:22 going down to Show more options or pressing the keyboard shortcut Shift+F10.
• 01:27 That's going to give us that old school menu where we have menu options for
• 01:30 things like Rename and Delete.
• 01:32 So now that we're clicked on the Downloads folder, I've got some files in here.
• 01:36 So these are just things that I've downloaded recently.
• 01:39 Now, I'm going to click the Maximize button to make this full screen so
• 01:42 we can see this a little bit better.
• 01:44 Now, we can change the way that we're viewing our files in File Explorer.
• 01:49 If we take a look at the menu running across the top,
• 01:52 we have a View dropdown just here.
• 01:53 And notice that the way that I'm currently viewing my files is in Content View
• 01:58 because I have that little dot next to that option.
• 02:01 But we have lots of other ways that we can view our files, and
• 02:04 there are different advantages to each.
• 02:07 For example, if I go for extra large icons,
• 02:10 it's going to show all of my files as huge icons.
• 02:13 So I don't get to see a great deal of information about the file,
• 02:17 I can simply see the file name, but
• 02:19 I do get a thumbnail preview as to what that file looks like.
• 02:23 So that can be quite useful, particularly if you have a folder that contains a lot
• 02:26 of images, and you're looking for a specific one.
• 02:29 It's very useful to be able to see the actual image.
• 02:32 If we go back to View, we have similar ones.
• 02:34 Large icons, that's just a bit smaller.
• 02:36 Medium size is smaller again.
• 02:38 And as you would imagine, small icons means we don't get any thumbnails.
• 02:43 This time, we just get the file name and no other information.
• 02:47 And I will say this is not a view that I like to use.
• 02:49 I find this quite confusing, but again, this is entirely personal preference.
• 02:54 What else do we have? Well, we have a list option in here.
• 02:57 Again, that's just going to list out all of our files.
• 03:00 We can't see any other information other than the file name.
• 03:03 We can't even see the file extension, which, a lot of the time,
• 03:07 gives us a good idea as to which application this file relates to.
• 03:10 We do, however, have these organized into different buckets automatically.
• 03:15 So it's sorted them, and it's showing me all of the files created last week,
• 03:20 earlier this month, and earlier this year.
• 03:23 Now, the option that I generally tend to use all the time is the Details view.
• 03:28 I find this a lot easier to use.
• 03:30 Not only does it group together my files into buckets,
• 03:33 making them a lot more organized, but if I drag this column out,
• 03:36 notice that we can modify the width of our columns.
• 03:39 I can see the full file name, as well as some other pieces of useful information.
• 03:43 So I can see the date that these were last modified.
• 03:47 I can see the type.
• 03:48 So it's telling me if it's a PNG file, a JPG file,
• 03:51 if it's a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, or an Excel worksheet.
• 03:56 I can also see the size of that file as well.
• 03:59 So I like to have the size column if I'm looking for
• 04:03 large files that I have stored on my PC.
• 04:05 If I'm trying to free up some space on my PC, a lot of the time,
• 04:09 I'll come into a folder, I'll organize them by size, and
• 04:12 I can see the ones that are taking up the most room at the top.
• 04:16 And you can click on each of these column headings in order to sort this list by
• 04:20 that particular column.
• 04:22 So again, if I click on Size, it's going to sort them by group, and
• 04:26 it's going to put the largest at the top.
• 04:28 Let's go back into View.
• 04:29 If we go to Tiles, we have a slightly different way of viewing our files.
• 04:34 And we then have Content, which is what we started out with.
• 04:37 We also have something in here called Compact view.
• 04:40 Now this is very subtle, it just decreases the space between items.
• 04:44 So if I click this, I don't know if you saw any change there,
• 04:48 it also applies to our folder list over here.
• 04:51 So we now have less whitespace between all of our folders.
• 04:55 For me, that doesn't make a great deal of difference, so I'm going to turn that off.
• 04:58 Now also in this View menu right at the bottom, we have a Show area.
• 05:03 So this is where we can toggle off and on different parts of File Explorer,
• 05:07 depending on what our preference is.
• 05:10 Now notice, all of the things I currently have toggled on have a tick next to them,
• 05:15 Navigation pane and Item check boxes.
• 05:18 Now the Navigation pane is actually the folder list down the left-hand side.
• 05:22 Notice what happens if I deselect this, it removes it.
• 05:26 Now in general, I never turn that off.
• 05:28 I like to be able to navigate using that pane.
• 05:31 But maybe if you're just trying to focus on one folder, and you want to remove any
• 05:35 noise around the outside, you can toggle that off if you want to.
• 05:38 I'm going to put that back on immediately.
• 05:42 Something else we might want to do, and for this,
• 05:44 I'm actually going to switch into Details view.
• 05:46 Let's go back to Show.
• 05:48 We have a Details pane.
• 05:50 So if I click on a file, so let's just go for this one just here,
• 05:53 it's going to show this Details pane on the right-hand side,
• 05:57 which gives me a bit more information about this particular file.
• 06:00 So this is an image of me.
• 06:02 It showed me the dimensions, the size, and the date it was created.
• 06:06 So that can sometimes be quite useful.
• 06:08 If I was to click on something like an Excel spreadsheet,
• 06:11 I get a lot more information.
• 06:12 So this is picking up the metadata from within that Excel spreadsheet.
• 06:16 Let's go back to Show.
• 06:17 I'm going to turn the Details pane off.
• 06:20 We can choose to show a Preview pane.
• 06:23 So again, this is going to show you a preview of whatever it is that you're
• 06:27 currently clicked on.
• 06:28 So for example, if I click on a PowerPoint presentation,
• 06:32 I can actually see the first slide in here.
• 06:35 So that can sometimes be quite useful as well.
• 06:37 Now if we go back to Show,
• 06:38 one of the ones that I do have turned on is Item check boxes.
• 06:41 Now you don't necessarily have to have these turned on, but
• 06:44 they can be quite useful for selecting multiple files.
• 06:47 So in general, in Internet Explorer, if I want to select multiple files, notice that
• 06:52 if I hover over a file, I get a little checkbox, and this is the Item check box.
• 06:57 So it makes it nice and simple for me to select multiple all in one go.
• 07:02 If I want to select everything in this list,
• 07:05 I could click the check box next to Name, and it's going to select everything.
• 07:10 Click it again to deselect.
• 07:11 Without those item check boxes, we can still make multiple selections, but
• 07:16 we need to hold down the Ctrl key instead.
• 07:18 So I would click on the first one, hold down Ctrl, click on the second, and
• 07:22 then go through and click on whatever files I want.
• 07:24 So you can turn those on, or you can keep them off.
• 07:28 Another thing we can do is we can show the file name extension, so if I turn this on,
• 07:33 it's going to show the file extension, so .zip, .png, .xlsx.
• 07:38 And file extensions are really important.
• 07:40 It basically tells your computer which application it
• 07:44 needs to open in order to launch this file.
• 07:46 The final thing I want to talk about here is sorting our files.
• 07:50 So if we have lots of files in a folder like we do here,
• 07:53 we do have some options for sorting.
• 07:55 So currently, you can see my files are being sorted by
• 08:00 the name in ascending order, so A to Z by their name.
• 08:04 Anything that starts with numbers like these top two here will be
• 08:08 placed at the top of the list, but we can choose to change that.
• 08:11 So maybe I want to sort by the date they were modified, or
• 08:15 maybe I want to sort by the type, and I can choose ascending or descending order.
• 08:20 Also notice we can change the way that we're grouping our files.
• 08:24 So currently, I'm grouping them by Date modified, and that's the groups that you
• 08:28 can see last week, earlier this month, earlier this year.
• 08:31 But I could choose to group them by type if I wanted to.
• 08:35 So now I have all of my zip folders at the top, all of my JPG files together,
• 08:39 all of my Excel worksheets together, so on and so forth.
• 08:43 So you can really group these by whatever you find most useful.
• 08:46 So that's a quick tour around the different ways that you can view your
• 08:50 files and folders in File Explorer, and also how you can apply sorting options.

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