Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Windows XP in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Part I: Wake Up with Windows XP
  • Hour 1. Taking a Bird's-Eye Look at Windows XP
  • Hour 2. Getting Started with Windows XP
  • Hour 3. Managing the Windows XP Interface
  • Part II: Morning Windows Desktop Exploration
  • Hour 4. Working with the My Computer Window
  • Hour 5. Navigating Files with Windows Explorer
    • Introducing the Windows Explorer
    • The Explorer Options
    • Managing Documents with a Right Mouse Click
    • Right-Click to Copy and Move Documents
    • Using the Explorer's Task Pane
    • Where Do the Deleted Files Go?
    • Making Windows XP Easier to Use
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Hour 6. Calling for Help
  • Hour 7. Improving Your Windows Desktop Experience
  • Part III: Early Afternoon Windows Exploration
  • Hour 8. Installing Programs with Windows XP
  • Hour 9. Finding Files, Folders, and Friends
  • Hour 10. Using the Desktop Accessories
  • Part IV: Late Afternoon Internet Integration
  • Hour 11. Surfing the Web with Internet Explorer
  • Hour 12. Tying Windows into the Web
  • Hour 13. Networking with Windows XP
  • Hour 14. Managing E-mail and Newsgroups with Outlook Express
  • Part V: An Evening with Advanced Windows
  • Hour 15. Exploring Your Hardware Interface
  • Hour 16. Understanding Printing and Fonts
  • Hour 17. Using Windows on the Road
  • Hour 18. Giving Windows XP a Tune-Up
  • Hour 19. Managing Your Hard Drives
  • Hour 20. Tinkering with the Advanced System Tools
  • Part VI: Having Fun at Nighttime
  • Hour 21. Using Media Player
  • Hour 22. Picturing Windows XP Graphics
  • Hour 23. Making Movies with Windows XP
  • Hour 24. Advanced Windows XP Tips
  • Part VII: Appendixes
  • Appendix A. Differences Between the Windows Home and Professional Edition
  • Appendix B. Glossary
  • Appendix C. Answers to Quizzes

Managing Documents with a Right Mouse Click

After you display the Explorer (or any other file list in Windows XP), you can point to any folder or document and click the right mouse button to perform several actions on the document. Here's what you can do with documents:

• Select documents by clicking them to highlight them
• Play sound or video files and view graphics
• Print selected documents
• Copy selected files to a disk
• Cut or copy selected text to the Windows Clipboard (an area of memory that holds data that you copy there until you replace the Clipboard's contents with something else or log off Windows)
• Create a shortcut access to the file so that you can later open the file without using the Open dialog box
• Delete documents
• Rename documents
• Change documents'system attributes

Right-clicking a folder's name produces a menu that enables you to perform these actions.

The following To Do item walks you through many of these right-click actions.

To Do: Practicing with the Right-Click

1. Inside an Explorer window, point to a text file on your C: drive. Text files use a spiral notepad icon. Open your Windows folder if you see no text files in your C:'s root folder. Point to the file and right-click. A pop-up menu opens to the right of the document, as shown in Figure 5.5.

   

   Figure 5.5 A right-click displays a pop-up menu.

   The Open command always attempts to examine the document's native format and open the document with an appropriate program such as the Windows's Notepad program. Although the first command is Open for text files, the command is Play if you right-clicked a sound file. For now, don't select Open.

2. Find a blank formatted diskette. Insert the diskette in the A: drive. Right-click over the text document and select the Send To command. The disk drive appears in the list that appears when you select Send To. When you select the disk drive, Windows XP begins sending an exact copy of the text file to the disk. Windows graphically displays the sending of the document to the A: drive with a flying document going from one folder to another.

3. Point to the text file once again and right-click. Select Delete. Windows displays the message box shown in Figure 5.6. Don't choose Yes because you need to keep the text file where it is.

   The Recycle Bin is a special location inside Windows that holds the documents you delete. The Recycle Bin's icon appears on your Windows desktop. Windows gives you one last chance to recover deleted documents. When you delete a document file of any type, Windows sends that file to the Recycle Bin. The documents are then out of your way but not deleted permanently until you empty the Recycle Bin. Remember that you can delete documents directly from any Open dialog box.

   

   Figure 5.6 The Recycle Bin holds deleted documents for a while.

4. Click No because you should not delete the text file now.
5. It's extremely easy to rename a document. Right-click to display the document's pop-up menu and select Rename. Windows highlights the name, and you can edit or completely change the name to something else. Change the filename now to XYZ. Press Enter to keep the new name. (If you want to cancel a rename operation you've started, press Esc.)

6. Try this: Move the mouse pointer to an area of the Explorer's right pane where no icon appears and right-click. A new menu appears.

   The Undo Rename command reverses the previous renaming of the document. Select Undo Rename, and the XYZ text file you just renamed reverts to its original name.

You now understand the most important commands in the Explorer's primary right-click pop-up menus. These menus differ slightly depending on the kind of document you click (folder, video, sound, graphic, program, text, word processor document, and so on), but the fundamental menu of commands stays the same and works the way this section describes. If you want to make copies of files on the hard disk or move the file to a different location, you should master the techniques described in the next section.

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