What’s the difference between folders and files?

Folders - are very similar to manila folders in a file cabinet. Inside each of the Folders we will store our “files”. You can create sub-folders, or sub-sub folders to keep your “files” even more organized on different projects that you may be involved with. Such as initially you might have a folder for “Insurance”, but once it begins to get full – you may want to have sub-folders for different types of insurance: health, life, car, home, boat etc..

Files - each individual item we save on the computer – whether it is a photo, document, spreadsheet, song or video is known as a File. Files are the items that you are able to view and to work on if desired. An example would be the images you download from your digital camera; or the Word document that you've created. If you download a CD of music to your computer – although it is only 1 CD, each individual song or track of music is then an individual file.

TIPS:

• When naming files or folders we cannot use computer language symbols such as back or forwarded slashes ( / or \)
• When naming a file with dates you can use: 8.24.10 or 8-24-10 but cannot use 8/24/10.
• Use spaces when you name files or folders to make your filing easier.
• The filing system on the computer always puts numbers before letters 0-9 will always go before a-z, so if you want a file or folder to stay at the top, name it 0.0 to do - the zeros will keep it at the top, vs. naming it to do which would it put it towards the bottom of your list

Folders vs. Files – What’s the Difference?

When you are "saving/filing" items on your computer - it is helpful to know the difference between a file and/or a folder... sounds obvious - but to many this is confusing...

FILES – are each individual item on your computer that has a name – so if you take 5 photos, your camera will give them each a name – that “name” is a file – all file names end with an extension that tell us and the computer what the file is most photo’s will end in .jpg or maybe .bmp, .gif, .png, .tif etc.. If you have a music CD you want to copy/download to the computer, and that one CD has 12 music tracks – then there will be 12 different file names – music/audio file extensions might be .mp3, .wav, .wma

FOLDERS – symbolized with a manila folder – are the places where we store/file things of a like nature – PC’s are shipped with common folders - With Windows 98 and XP Operating Systems, the common folder names are: “My Documents”; “My Pictures”, “My Music”, “My Videos”, “My Scans”; in newer Windows Operating Systems, Vista & Windows 7, the word “My” has been dropped in your filing libraries

You can create as many folders, sub-folders, sub-sub folders, etc. as you would like. When you create a new folder - remember that whatever folder is highlighted in Windows Explorer or in the Filing Name Drop Down Box - that becomes the "Parent" to your new folder and therefore your new folder can & will be found "inside" that highlighted folder...