Expanding and contracting drives and folders ( Win. Vista & 7 )

Expanding and contracting drives and folders

• Double click on the Drive C icon.    The screen will change as illustrated.    The contents of the C drive (your hard disk) are displayed within the right side of the window.  In the example shown the folders contained on the hard disk have a folder shaped icon, as below.

• Double click on the dive C: icon again and the folder structure on your hard disk will expand again, as illustrated.

• You will notice the folders displayed in the left side of the window are prefixed with one of the following shapes.    

• Click on one of the dark triangle shapes.    You will see that it then changes to the shape below.   

• The shape below indicates that when you click on it, the folder substructure will expand to display the subfolder(s) contained within the parent folder.   

• The shape below indicates that when you click on it, the expanded folder substructure will contract to just display the parent folder.   

• Experiment with clicking on both the expanding and contracting icons and view the effect on the structure displayed on your screen. 

• Before continuing close the Windows Explorer program and then restart it.

Types of Windows Explorer icons 

• Your screen should look like this: 

  

• Scroll up the screen and select the Users folder icon.

   

• Double click on the Users folder icon and you will see that the Users folder collapses, to just display the Users parent icon in the left side of the window. 

  

• Click on the Windows folder.  You will see the Windows parent folder displayed in the left side of the screen, with the contents of the Windows folder (i.e. files and subfolders) displayed on the right side of the window.  

 

• Scroll down the contents within the right side of the window and soon you will see a variety of different icons representing different types of files. 

  

• You should be able to see the following icon displayed.    This is a program icon.  Double click on this and you will run the Windows Explorer program.