 |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tips & Tricks | Tutorial |
Les Townsing, a member of the Melbourne PCUG, Australia April 2011 issue, PC UPDATE www.melbpc.org.au editor (at) melbpc.org.au |
There is often a lot of information automatically recorded when you save a file. This information can be easily displayed and can prove to be useful when sorting/categorizing files.
Normally, when you open Windows Explorer (right-click on the Start button and select ‘Explore’) you get displays indicating the file name, size, date modified, and other general information (see below).
If, however, we right-click anywhere on the Column Heading bar we get a lot of additional columns we can add. Depending on the type of files you can select some meaningful columns. If we are looking at picture files (jpg) some appropriate columns may be Date Taken, Dimensions or file size.
If you right-click on a file and select properties, you get to view all the possible information as well as the ability to edit some of the fields.
You can now sort your files by any of the columns (just left click on the column heading).
If we right-click on a file, we can select Rename and change the name to a more meaningful title rather than a bunch of numbers. These features may be more meaningful if we use music files as an example.
Unfortunately, some of the “Ripper” programs (programs that copy CDs and often convert the files to MP3s) get it wrong or leave a lot of stuff out, which can be quite annoying, particularly if it is the artist’s name or the title of the song.
When selecting a CD Ripper program this is one item worth checking.
Extra Tip
If you select a file (click on it) then hold down the shift key whilst clicking on another file then the system will select all the files in between and including the first and last file you clicked on. Now, if you right-click on any one of the selected files and choose properties, you can edit a field for all the selected files. This is no good for titles as every file must have a different name. However, it is good when you want to edit the album title or artist for a number of tracks.
Extra Extra Tip
Often the files you want to select are not consecutive in a list. No problem, hold down the control key then click on the files you want. As you click on the files they become marked as selected. You can then right-click on any selected file to edit the properties of all the selected files.