A Closer Look at the Home Ribbon

The "File Explorer" Icon
The “File Explorer” Icon

Open up File Explorer. Across the top of your window there should be a selection of buttons. This is the “Ribbon”. Selecting each of the “Titles” (Home, Share, View) will change which Buttons are available. This Article will be focusing on the “Home” Section. (“View” is explained in this article).

If you do not have the Ribbon showing, try clicking the “Show/Hide Ribbon” button at the top right of your window)

The Show/Hide Ribbon button
Show or Hide the Ribbon using this button!

Now, onto the Features:

Pin to Quick Access

This button is rarely used, but can be helpful if you use a particular Folder a lot. Select a Folder, and click here, to “Pin” that Folder to the Quick Access area of the Navigation Pane.

What does that mean? At the top of the Navigation Pane (left-hand section of File Explorer) is a Section containing links to your Main Folders (Documents, Pictures, etc), and you can add other Folders here, so that they always show up, giving you Quick Access to them!

Cut/Copy/Paste

These buttons will Cut or Copy the selected Item, or Paste the contents of the Clipboard into the current location. More detail of how this works can be found in my previous Article.

Two extra features are the “Copy Path” and “Paste Shortcut” buttons.

Copy Path

Instead of Copying the actual Item you have selected, this will copy the Location of it (as displayed in the Location Bar near the top of the window).

e.g. If I select my “CTRL-X Man” picture, and click “Copy Path”, I will enter the location to the clipboard, which I can then Paste into a Document:

“C:\Users\philw\Pictures\Blog Photos\CTRLXman.jpg”

(Notice that it uses the Full Path, starting from the Drive Letter (“C:” for my main Hard Drive), rather than the truncated version used in the Location Bar)

Paste Shortcut

The Shortcut Tag
The Shortcut Tag

Again, this deals with the Location of an item rather than the Item itself. Select an item and Copy it. Move to a new Location, and Paste Shortcut to create a Link to the original Item. This does not create a  new copy, and you should notice the “Shortcut” tag on the Icon, showing that it is a Pointer, or Shortcut to the actual Item.

Here we note that the Ribbons are organised into Sections. We have just dealt with the “Clipboard” Section, as titled below the Buttons. We now move to the “Organise” Section.

Organise

Move To/Copy To

In Windows 10, Microsoft have provided yet another way of moving/copying our Files around.

Select your Item(s), and click one of these buttons. You will be presented with a list of potential Locations to choose. If you cannot see the Location you wish to use, then look at the bottom of the list, where you will find “Choose Location …”. Clicking here will present you with a Mini-Explorer, which you can use to find the desired Location.

Delete

This will Delete the selected Item. Actually, it will move it into the Recycle Bin, where it will stay until that is Emptied. This does give you a chance to retrieve Items that are accidentally deleted.

NOTE: Deleting a Folder will delete all of the contents. Any Files and/or sub-folders inside the deleted Folder will also be deleted!

Rename

Folder ready for renaming
Blue Highlights

By selecting an Item, and then pressing this button, you can Rename either a File or Folder.

The item’s Name will gain a Border, and highlight in blue, indicating that it is ready for you to type the new Name.

New

The “New” section deals with adding new Items. As dealt with in my previous Article, there is a button for creating a New Folder.

There is also a Menu called “New Item”, which gives a list of Items you may wish to create e.g. Word Document, Bitmap (picture) file, spreadsheet etc. As this always creates a Blank version, I find it more useful to open the appropriate Program to create a new File.

The Easy Access menu is also one I would not recommend using just yet. Familiarise yourself with how the Explorer system works first.

Open

The only useful button here is “Properties”. Select an Item, and click this, to open a new window that will display quite a  list of properties about it, including File Size, Date  Created, Modified, and Accessed, and other useful information.

Select

  • “Select All” does what it says on the tin. It selects all items in the current location.
  • “Select None”. Ensures that no Items are selected.
  • “Invert Selection” can be occasionally useful. e.g. If I want to delete all Items apart from my CTRL-X-Man picture, I can Select CTRL-X-Man, and Invert Selection so that everything except that file are selected, and then click Delete!

ToolTips

Tool Tip
Tool Tip

You may have noticed that when you “hover” your mouse pointer over a button, a little box appears. These boxes are called “Tool Tips”, and give you Tips about the Tool you are thinking of using! They usually display the Name of the Button you are hovering over, the Keyboard Shortcut (if any), and a brief description of the Function. They can be very helpful for quickly looking along a Menu or Ribbon, to see what Tools are available!

Finally

So why not take another look at your Home Ribbon! You may find some features that you never knew were there!

Do you find the Ribbon Buttons easier than CTRL-keys, or right-clicking? Or are you a Keyboard Fan, and use the Mouse as little as possible? Does the F10 key get used?

Why not let people know what you prefer! Maybe you can win over some converts!

A Closer Look at the Navigation Pane

That is, the left-hand Menu, in File Explorer

Documents Folder, with many Files and Folders in it
Documents Folder, with many Files and Folders in it

If you remember our earlier Article, you will recall the sections of the File Explorer window. Here we will examine the left-hand menu, or “Navigation Pane”, to give it its proper title.

The "File Explorer" Icon
The “File Explorer” Icon
The Navigation Pane
The Navigation Pane

So, open your File Explorer, Maximise it (the “Squares” button at the top right) to fill the screen, and take a look at the Navigation Pane. If you do not have the left-hand menu, try clicking “Navigation Pane” on the View Ribbon, and ensuring the entry “Navigation Pane” is ticked!

Now, What you will see is a list of Folders and Locations. From this list, we can easily navigate to any area of our File Structure that we wish!

So, let’s have a look at what we have:

At the top will be “Quick Access”. This lists your Main Folders (Desktop, Documents, etc), plus your most recently accessed Folders. You can add or remove folders from this area, but for now, we can leave it as-is.

We then have One Drive, the Microsoft online Cloud Storage. This will be discussed elsewhere.

And then, “This PC”. Here, again, we have a list of the Main Folders, and then any Disk Drives attached to the computer. “C:” is your System Drive, and may be titled “OS” (for Operating System), or “Windows” (for that is the Operating System you are using), or some other label. You probably have a DVD Drive, which will be shown here (Mine is the H: Drive, and currently has “The Settlers IV” Game CD loaded). You may also have other drives, such as USB Flash Drives, or External Hard Drives.

Network and Homegroup are for if your PC is connected to other computers on your network.

So what can we do?

Sub-Folder Tags
Sub-Folder Tags

I’m glad you asked!

The main use is to navigate quickly from one location to another. Try clicking on “Pictures”. You should notice that the Main Window now displays your Pictures Folder, and the Navigation bar (above the Main Window) shows “This PC > Pictures”. Now Click on “Documents”. And “Pictures” again.

We can also explore sub-folders. Move your mouse over the “This PC” section, and you should see some “>” tags. These show you that the Folder has Folders inside (beneath) it. Clicking a tag will show you these subfolders!

My Music collection is not very extensive, but this shows the structure of my Collection. My Music includes some audio from the BBC (namely Dr Who episodes), some Heather Nova, and a whole bunch of sound effects!

The keen-eyed amongst you will have noticed that tags of folders that we can see inside (such as “Music”, and “bbc audio”, in this case) are pointing downwards, and also their contents is slightly indented.

That’s All Folks!

That is pretty much all there is to the Navigation Pane.

It is a useful tool for moving around your folders.

If you prefer to recover your screen real-estate, you can switch it off using the View Ribbon > Navigation Pane button!

Do you find it useful? Which folders do you use it to jump between? Let us know!

A Closer Look at the View Ribbon

“But my screen doesn’t look like that!”

Everyone’s computer will be set a little differently, and with everyone having different Files and Folders, you can expect your screen to look slightly different from the examples given here, and from your friends’ and neighbours’ screens.

Firstly, as so wisely instructed by the late, great Douglas Adams:

Don’t Panic!

Look for the similarities, rather than the differences. You should have the main features available.

As we are focusing on Appearance, it would be well to be able to see the View Ribbon. Most PCs will have this set by default, but if not, there are two ways to show it.

  1. CTRL-F1. (We learnt previously about holding the Control key, and tapping another key. This Command uses the “Function One” key, labelled “F1”, the very top row of your keyboard).
  2. “Expand the Ribbon” button. As shown here, the small ‘arrow’ at the top right of your Window will show or hide the Ribbon.
The Show/Hide Ribbon button
Show or Hide the Ribbon using this button!

Now we can see our Ribbon, let us take a closer look at the Tools available on it.

Click on the “View” tab, to show the viewing tools.

The "View" tab
The “View” tab

Notice that the Ribbon is split into sections. Each section has its name beneath it. See from the above image that the “Panes” and “Layout” sections are visible. (You should also have other sections.)

Each section has a group of tools that perform similar functions. Let us take a look:

Panes

The File Explorer window is split into several sections, as we have seen. The Ribbon and Location Bar at the top, and below that, the Navigation Pane and the Main Section.

As you can see from the Ribbon, there are other “Panes” available. Click on each of them to view or hide them.

Navigation Pane

We have briefly looked at this. It provides shortcuts to move between different Folders. It will usually have your Default Folders (Documents, Pictures, Music, etc), and a set of “Recently used” Folders.

Preview Pane

When this Pane is visible, it will appear on the right-hand side of your screen.

If you select a File (by clicking once on it), the computer will attempt to show you a Preview of the File.

If you have the Layout set to “Medium Icons” or larger, then the Icons will also show this preview. The Preview Pane is more useful when you have Layout set to Details, or List.

Not all Files are capable of showing a Preview, and the Preview Pane will inform you if you have selected such a File.

Details pane

This Pane will appear instead of the Preview Pane, at the right of the screen.

When you select a File, this Pane will display some extra information about the File, including when it was last modified, how much space it takes up, and more, depending upon what type of file it is.

This information is similar to that shown when using the Details Layout, so is more useful if you are using the Icons Layouts.

All of these Panes may be Hidden, by clicking their Button on the Ribbon, if you prefer less “clutter” on your screen.

I very rarely show the Preview or Details Panes, but you may find them useful.

Layout

The Layout section
The Layout section

In this section, we can control how we view the Icons in the main section.

Hover over each of the choices, and the icons will show that style. They will revert back if you move away, or you can set them to the style you prefer by Clicking the style you like.

Large Icons” and “Extra-large Icons” can be useful if your folder contains a lot of Images, as you will be shown a Preview without having to open each file individually to see what it contains.

Details” will show you some extra information about each file.

List” is good for fitting a lot of Files and Folders on the screen at once.

Have a practice at changing between these styles, and choose one that you like.

Personally, I move between Large Icons and Details, depending on which Files I am working with, but you should use the style you are happiest with.

Details
“Details” Style.
List
“List” style
Extra-Large Icons!
Extra-Large Icons!

Current View

The “Current View” tools can be used to change the order that your Files and Folders are displayed in.

Sort By

This tool, as its name suggests, will allow you to sort your Files in a variety of ways. Clicking the button will show a menu of options, including Date, Name, Type and more.

The "Sort By" Menu
The “Sort By” Menu

By Default, Items are arranged by Name, with Folders being shown first, and then Files. You can change this to arrange in other orders, and as you can see from the Menu, in Ascending or Descending order (so that you can have “Newest First”, or “Oldest First”, for example).

Group By

This tool allows us not just to order our Files, but to split them into groups, making it easier to differentiate between them.

The best way to explain this is to show you an example:

Files Grouped by Type
Files Grouped by Type

As you can see, all of the .pdf files are now together, and all of the .bmp files are next to each other, separated into “Groups”.

This, like Sort By, can be done by Name, Date, Type, etc.

This can  be a very useful tool if you are organising your files. e.g. You can Group By Date to put all photos taken on a certain date together, and Shift-Click them (remember how we hold SHIFT, click the first file we want, then keeping SHIFT held, click the last file, to select all of these files), to Cut and Paste into their own folder.

(The other tools on this section are not needed at the moment, and we shall not be discussing them)

Show/Hide section

These tools will alter the way some things are displayed.

Item Check Boxes

If this is switched on, then hovering over an item will reveal its Check Box. Clicking this box will Select that item.

This can be useful for selecting Multiple items, rather than CTRL- or SHIFT- clicking.

Some "Checked" items
Some “Checked” items

These items may then be Cut or Copied, as previously discussed.

File Name Extensions

THIS SHOULD BE SWITCHED ON!

File Name Extensions tell you what Type each file is.

For example, I have three files associated with a 3d modelling project, all with the same name! The previews are very similar.

With the Extensions viewable, I can easily see which is the Project File (.skp), which is the BackUp file (.skb), and which is a snapshot of the project (.jpg, an Image file).

Files, with Extensions showing!
Files, with Extensions showing!

Hidden Items

Some files are marked as “Hidden”. Usually these are System Files, that you would not want to change, move or delete. By making sure that this box is NOT ticked, you will not be able to see or affect these files.

There are circumstances where these files will want to be available, but I would recommend that you keep them Hidden.

Hide Selected Items

You can choose to mark Files as Hidden, and they will not be displayed unless you Tick the previously mentioned “Show Hidden Items” box.

I Strongly recommend that you do NOT do this.

There is very little reason, outside of System Diagnosis and Repair that you would want to do this.

Options

A long, complicated list of Advanced Options.

Probably best to ignore.

Practice, Practice, Practice!

You can now adjust your Display to the way you like!

Have a try with some of the Layouts and Groups (notice the “Group By > None” option, to remove the groupings!)

Don’t worry if you get it wrong. These tools do not actually change any Data, just the way the items are shown to you. It can all be changed back easily.

Do you like List View, or Large Icons? Do you use the Preview Pane?

Why not let me know how you prefer your Screen Display.