Navigating Windows Vista Folders

A folder is a storage area on a drive, just like a real folder in a file cabinet. Windows Vista divides your computer's hard drives into many folders to separate your many projects. For example, you store all your music in your Music folder and your pictures in your Pictures folder. That lets both you and your programs find them easily.

Any type of drive can have folders, but hard drives need folders the most because they contain thousands of files. By dividing a hard drive into little folder compartments, you can more easily see where everything sits.

Windows' Computer program lets you probe into different folders and peek at the files stuffed inside each one. To see the folders Vista created for you to play with, click your user account's name at the top of the Start menu. The following folders, shown in Figure 1, appear:

• Contacts: Have you sent e-mail to somebody with Vista's built-in Mail program? Vista automatically places that person's name in the Contacts folder, listed on a little business card that opens with a double-click. Right-click a contact's name, choose Action, and select Send Email to open a pre-addressed e-mail, ready for your message. Right-clicking is often a quicker way to send an e-mail while you remember, as opposed to opening Mail and then getting lost in your Inbox deluge.

• Desktop: Here's a secret: Vista considers your desktop to be one large folder, and everything you place on your desktop really lives inside this folder. Because your desktop is a larger target for pointing and clicking, you probably won't use this folder much.

• Documents: Be sure to store all your work inside this folder, for several reasons. By keeping everything in one place, you can find your files easier. Plus, it's something only you can find; other people using the computer can't fiddle with it. Create as many new folders inside here as you want.

• Downloads: Downloaded something from the Internet? Internet Explorer stashes most downloaded files in this folder, making it easier than ever to find.

• Favorites: Internet Explorer lets you save your favorite Web sites as, well, Favorites. That places them all on the program's Favorites menu for easy, one-click access. Those favorite sites also appear in this folder, where a double-click on a site's icon launches Internet Explorer and brings the site to your screen.

• Links: This folder lists all the places listed on Vista's Navigation Pane, which appears along the left side of most folders. Dragging and dropping icons here also adds them to your Navigation Pane.

• Music: When you copy music from CDs to your PC with Media Player, the songs end up in here, stored in a folder named after the CD's title.

• Pictures: Store all your pictures in here, whether they're photos from a digital camera, images from a scanner, or images filched from a Web site. The Pictures folder displays thumbnails of your photos and lets you grab pictures from an attached camera, create slide shows, and engage in more Foto Fun.

• Saved Games: Ever saved a game of Chess, FreeCell, or any of Vista's many other games? Those saved games live in here, waiting for your boss to leave. You may spot saved games from other game manufacturers, as well.

• Searches: Any searches you save appear here. (You can also find your saved searches by clicking the word Search in the Navigation Pane.)

• Videos: Videos downloaded from camcorders and the Internet should stay here. It's the first place some video programs, like Vista's Movie Maker, look for them.

Keep these folder facts in mind when shuffling files in Vista:

• You can ignore folders and dump all your files onto the Windows Vista desktop. But that's like tossing everything into the backseat of the car and pawing around to find your tissue box a month later. Organized stuff is much easier to find.

Computer folders use a tree metaphor as they branch out from one main folder (a disk drive), to smaller folders, to more folders stuffed inside those folders.

• Folders used to be called directories and subdirectories. But some people were getting used to that, so the industry switched to the term folders.