 Recognizing common file types
• View the contents of the File types folder.
• This folder contains a range of different file types.
• Common file types include. Application (executable) files: These are files that contain programs and which you can ‘run’. If you select an executable file within the Windows Explorer and double click on it, then
the file will run the program within it. There are many different types of executable files. Mostly we will be interested in running application program files that contain our programs, such as a word processor or a spreadsheet program. Do not confuse the executable files with the data files. If you look within the Windows folder on your hard disk you will see a number of application files, as illustrated below. As you can see from the illustration above, provided that you view the files within the Windows Explorer in Details view, then the file type is normally listed. In the case above you can see it is listed as an Application, i.e. executable file. Text Documents: As the name suggests text documents contain only text. No pictures or formatting information can be stored in a text-only file. Bitmap Images: This is a type of picture format. GIF Images: This is a type of picture format. JPEG Images: This is a type of picture format.
Microsoft Office Word Documents:
These are documents created using the Microsoft Word, word processing program. Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet: These are documents created using the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program. Microsoft Office PowerPoint Presentation: These are document created using the Microsoft PowerPoint presentation program.
Microsoft Office Access Database: These files are created using the Microsoft Access Database program. HTML documents: These are documents formatted for displaying on a Web site. Zipped (compressed) files: These are compressed files. You compress files to save disk space or to make them smaller when you send them via an email attachment. Adobe Acrobat PDF files: PDF is short for Portable Document Format. This format was introduced by a company called Adobe and can be created by a program called Adobe Acrobat. The idea of PDF files is that you can create file with your own particular make and version of software, such as a word processor or spreadsheet and then save the file as a PDF formatted file. This PDF file can then be viewed by anyone using a free PDF reader, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader program. To put it another way, if someone procures some artwork in a program such as Adobe Photoshop, they can save the file in PDF format, send it to you and you can then view the file, without the need to have the Photoshop program installed on your computer. PDF files are a way of exchanges documents. There are many other products that will create PDF files for you as well as the full versions of the Adobe Acrobat program. Often you can create PDF files which have a much smaller files size compared to the original format. This makes PDF files ideal for storing documents on a web site, or for attaching as files to emails. Audio files MP3: There are files that store sound, normally music or speech. The icon used to display these files will vary according to what programs you have installed to play your music files. Video files: AVI, Video files - MPG & WMV (Windows Media Video)
These are different types of file formats used to store Video. The icon used to display these files will vary according to what programs you have installed to play your video files. Temporary files: These files, as the name implies, are normally created as temporary files which are deleted after use. Both Windows and application programs can create temporary files which are used to store information on a temporary basis and which are deleted when they are no longer used. If the computer crashes you may find that some files which were meant to be temporary are present as they were not automatically deleted.
Selecting multiple files
• Within the left side of the window, click on the folder called Selecting files.
• This will display the following files.
• Click on the file called Sales details. This will select that file, as illustrated.
• Click on another file, such as Charts. The second file will be selected and the first file de-selected, as illustrated.
TIP: Selecting multiple files is useful as once you have selected multiple files, you can manipulate all the files at the same time, rather than one file at a time, as we will see later.
• To select more than one file you need to use a trick. Click on the file called Dog. Then press the Ctrl key (and keep it pressed). Then click on the file called Sales Details. Finally click on a file called Raft race. Release the Ctrl key and all three files will remain selected, as illustrated.
• Click on a different file and the multiple files are no longer selected.
• Sometimes you may wish to select a block of files that are displayed next to one another. To do this we use a different trick. First list your files in alphabetical A-Z order by clicking at the top of the Name column. Your files are listed as illustrated.
• Click on the file called Dog. Press the Shift key and keep it pressed. Click on the file called River and then release the Shift key. All the files between the first and second file that you clicked on remain selected, as illustrated.
• Click on a different file and the multiple files are no longer selected. TIP: These tricks using the Shift or Control keys also work when selecting multiple folders.
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