Back To Basics 2

In our first Article, we discussed the Desktop, and getting online.

Now we shall move on to Emails. I looked at what email is earlier, and now we look at the practicalities of using it!

Who @ Where Dot Com?

Firstly, you need to a choose an Email Provider. many people choose to use the email service included with their Internet Access (such as by BT, Sky, Virgin, etc), but I would advise against that as a main Email address, as if you choose to switch Internet Provider, you will have to change your email address, and inform all of your contacts (friends, work colleagues, banks, Utility Companies etc) of your new address. Have a look at which Third-Party Email Suppliers are available.

Note: You may have as many email addresses as you like!

Some of the more popular Suppliers are:

Gmail, by Google.
Outlook, by Microsoft (previously Hotmail).
Yahoo Mail, by Yahoo.

Each of these has their own Sign-Up procedure, but they are very similar. Click the “Sign Up” button, fill in the forms, and choose your email name.

Here is where we run into the first hurdle!

A lot of people would like their own name as their email address, e.g. johnsmith@gmail.com. Now, there are a lot of John Smiths in the world, and each email must be unique! This means you may have to take johnsmith2@gmail.com, or johnsmith1980@gmail.com. But! These are probably gone, too!

The provider will suggest some available addresses, based upon the details you have given them, or you can keep trying to guess an un-taken one. Maybe use a nickname, or a reference to your hobby.

Example email addresses:

ChunkyLover53@aol.com (Homer Simpson – The Simpsons)
poshboy111@hotmail.co.uk (Benedict Cumberbatch)

Email addresses are not Case Sensitive. “JohnSmith@gmail.com” is the same as “johnsmith@Gmail.com”, and the same as “JohNsMIth@gMAil.coM”.

You can use a dot in your address, to try to distinguish it.
“johnsmith@gmail.com” and “john.smith@gmail.com” are different addresses.

Now that you have an address, you can move on to the next stage!

Webmail or Client?

What?

There are two main ways to do email on a PC.

Webmail, where you open your
Edge, Chrome and Firefox

web browser (e.g. Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox), and visit the Supplier’s webpage.
Email Client Program – a separate program on your PC dedicated to
Email Client Programs

email. Popular examples are “Windows 10 Mail App”, Mozilla Thunderbird, and the outdated Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail. If you choose this option, you will also need to decide whether to use POP3 or IMAP. We don’t need to know the ins-and-outs of what these mean: I strongly recommend IMAP, as you are synchronising with the Mail Server directly, and do not have to worry about losing the mail stored on your PC.

Whichever you choose, they tend to look quite similar. A list of folders (Inbox, Trash, Sent Items, etc) on the left, and a list of emails to the right. Sometimes there will be a Preview Pane to the right, or underneath the list of emails. Across the top will be your Tools.

Sending

To write a new email, you will need to find the button marked “New Email“, or “Compose” or “Write” (or some variant of this). This will present you with a box to write your new email in.

You will notice that there are several sections to this. You can move between the sections by Clicking them, or by pressing the TAB key on the left of your keyboard.

“To” – This is where you type the email address of the person(s) you wish to send an email to. You may add several addresses here, separated by commas.
“Subject” – Not only is it good ‘Netiquette’ to include a Subject line, some email providers will filter emails without a Subject, thinking they are Spam, or Junk Mail. A word or two is sufficient.
The Message Area – Here is where you write your email. While there is an upper limit for how much you can write, it is far larger than most people will want to write. (But if you attach other Files, you may quickly hit this limit – more on attachments later).

Once you have typed who to Send to, entered a Subject, and written the text of the email (including an opening line such as “Dear Sir”, or “Hi Mum”, and a close; “Yours Sincerely, PC Wizard”, “Cheers! Phil”), you are ready to press “Send”. Some programs/pages have this at the top of the email, others at the bottom.

Once you have Sent the email, it will wing its way across the Internet to the recipient’s Mail Sever, and wait there for them to collect it.

Receiving

Mostly, you do not have to do anything to Receive email. It is delivered to your Mail Server. If you are using Web Mail (viewing the email Web Page in your Browser), you will see any new emails as soon as you log in. If you use a Client (Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird, etc), they will check for new mail when you open them ,and automatically check again on a schedule (usually about every 10-15 minutes). There is usually a button to “Send/Receive”, which will make sure any of your emails have been sent, and check the Server for new arrivals, but this is not normally needed.

Advanced (Attachments)

Email can only cope with Text. Some clients/pages allow you to use Formatted text (i.e. using Bold, Italics and Colours).

If you wish to send anything else (e.g. Photographs, Word Documents, Spreadsheets, etc), you must use a Feature called “Attachments”. This is often represented by a Paperclip, and adds the File to the Email as an “extra”.

To use this, click the Paperclip icon (or “Attachment” button), and you will be presented with a mini-File-Explorer, to find your File. Navigate to the Folder that it is on, select it and click “Attach” (sometimes “Open”). You should now see a line in the email informing you of the attachment.

There is a limit to how much you can attach to each email, but this changes by Provider. A good rule of thumb is to only include 3-4 Attached Files. If you wish to send more than this, you can either send multiple emails, or use a Cloud-Sharing Service such as Dropbox, Google Drive or One Drive.

Practice, Practice, Practice!

If all this seems a little daunting, the best way to become more confident is to practice sending emails. It will soon become familiar!

Feel free to send me some emails, with or without attachments!

My email address is:

admin@thepcwizarduk.com

I look forward to hearing from you!

Back To Basics

In the Beginning Was The Desktop

Congratulations on your purchase of a shiny new Windows 10 Computer!

You have carefully taken it from its box, stripped off all of the protective layers, and placed it carefully upon your table.

Extension cables have been sourced, with multi-plug power-strips.

Numerous plugs are checked and connected. The monitor is adjusted to the perfect height and viewing-angle.

A nervous hand reaches out, finger poised by the Main Power Button …

Let There Be Windows!

What seems like a lifetime later, the computer is finally ready to use, and probably gives a display something like this:

Windows Desktop — Your version probably does not have the red Text all over it!

Whether you are new to computers, or have upgraded from a previous version of Windows, it is probably worthwhile having a quick review of what we can see here.

The main area is called The Desktop, an analogy for a desk, as seen in many a 20th-Century office. This is your route to your Tools, Documents, Programs (and Apps!), and generally where you work.

On the Desktop will be a number of small images. These area called Icons, and are usually links to Programs (or Apps!).

The large section to the bottom left is the “Start Menu“, which can be viewed/hidden using the Start Button (sometimes called the

Windows Button, or Flag).

Above the Start Button, from the top, we also have:

Account Details
File Explorer
Settings
Power

We will discuss the others later, but it may interest you to know that the Power button is where you click to switch the computer off.

Across the base of the screen is a black bar. This is known as the Task Bar, and contains a selection of Icons to launch Programs, along with links to Programs that are already running (if any).

To the very right-hand side of the task Bar is the Notification Area. This contains links to certain System Processes and Background Activities, along with a Digital Clock and at the very end, the Notifications Icon.

Now What?

So now that we know what all of these things are called, what do we do with them?

Well, it depends what you want to do!

I know that sounds like a bit of a non-answer, but you can do so much with a modern PC that it is difficult to know where to start …

OK, you’ll want to access the Information Superhighway. Getting there is easy.

Microsoft Edge Icon

See that blue “e” at the bottom of the screen (the Icon on the Task Bar), that is Microsoft Edge, an Internet Browser. You may have heard of Internet Explorer, well this is the replacement. Click there, and you will open Edge.

It will probably default to viewing the MSN webpage. This is a perfectly good page, but can be altered if you prefer to begin your browsing elsewhere (e.g. www.google.com, or your email page).

As you can see, there are several distinct areas here.

Everything above the red dotted line is “Browser Tools”.

Everything under it is the Web Page.

Firstly, we have the Address Bar, where you can type the address (the “htttp”,” www”, “.com” bit)of a webpage you wish to visit.

The Settings button will bring up a menu of different Tools.

“Tabs“, are where we can have multiple pages open, and choose which one we are viewing.

We’ll stick with just getting to the page you want, and leave Settings and Tabs for later.

If you know the address of the Web page you require, you click in the Address bar (You can press the F6 key at the top middle of your keyboard), delete anything that is there, and type the address. (e.g. https://www.google.co.uk). TIP: You can usually leave out the https://www. part, and just type google.co.uk or pcwizarduk.com

Press ENTER and the Browser will look for the page, and display it to you!

If you do not know the exact address, you will need to go to a Search Engine page! Notable Search Engines include:

Google (https://www.google.co.uk)
Bing by Microsoft (https://www.bing.com)
Yahoo (https://www.yahoo.com)
DuckDuckGo Anonymous Search (https://duckduckgo.com)

On the Search Engine page will be a Search Bar. Enter your search terms here. e.g. “Car Hire”, or “Where can I sell my gold”, or “My PC is broken, is there a PC Wizard near me”. Press the Search Button (sometimes a Magnifying Glass, and a list of results will be displayed.

So, that should give you something to play with for a while!
Remember: Be careful on the internet!

What were your first stumbling-blocks with your new PC? Did you get any instructions, or take a course? What was the best advice you received?

Who moved my files (Part two)

In our first Article, we learnt what Files and Folders are, and how to navigate File Explorer to see where they are being stored.

I am going to expand on the Navigation, to make sure we are confident in moving around the File System, before continuing on to explain about Moving files.

Navigation

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

Open your File Explorer, buy clicking the yellow Folder icon at the bottom of the screen. This will open a Window, showing your Files and Folders. Go into your Documents Folder by double-clicking the Documents Icon (should be near the top somewhere)

We learnt the main sections (Ribbon, Location Bar, Navigation Pane, Files and Folders Section), and now I want to show you a couple of other useful bits.

At the left of the Location Bar, we have the “Back” and “Up” buttons.

“Up” will move you from the current folder you are looking at, and take you to it’s Parent Folder (the folder it is inside of). For example, if we go from Documents into the Addresses folder, we can then click “Up” to return to Documents.

“Back” works in a similar way, but takes you to the Folder you were previously in.

These may sound the same, but there is an important difference.

“Up” will always move you to the Parent Folder. “Back” will move you to the previous Folder. These will often be the same, but if yo have used the navigation Pane to move around, they may not be. Lets look at an example:

Back And Up

Go into your Documents folder, and then into one of the folders inside Documents.

Click “Back”, and you return to Documents. Go inside a folder again, click “Up”, and we are back at Documents!

BUT! If we go into a folder, and then, using the left-hand navigation Pane, click on Pictures, where will these buttons take us?

“Back” will take us to the Folder we were previously in (e.g. Documents > Addresses). But “Up” will take us to “This PC”, as that is the Parent Folder of “Pictures”.

Try this a few times. Become confident with navigating your way around.

To help explain how this Hierarchy of Folders works, I have prepared an Image (everyone likes pictures, don’t they?)

We see here the “nesting” of Folders. “2017” is inside “Tax Returns”, which is inside “Documents”. “Glam” is inside “Heavy Metal”. which is inside “Music”. We sometimes refer to “Inside” as “Under”, which is why we go “Up” to the Parent Folder. If we go “Up” from “Holiday 2015” we get to “Pictures”.

Using the Navigation Pane, we can jump directly from wherever we happen to be to another Location. e.g. we can be looking at our 2015 Tax Returns (Documents > Tax Returns > 2015), and decide we are bored, and want to reminisce about a walk in the Park we went on. In the navigation Pane, we click on Pictures, and then A Walk in the Park. We then realise that we really have to get our tax Returns done, and go “Back”. Previous to A Walk In The Park, we were in Pictures, so “Back” takes us there. Clicking “Back” again takes us to Tax Returns > 2015, and we can complete our work. (The computer has remembered the chain of where we were previously. You may have seen a similar behaviour when browsing the Internet, and gone “Back” to a page you were previously viewing)

The “View” Menu

And eventually we get to the “Ribbon”!

At the top of your File Explorer Window is a section called The Ribbon:

You can see that there are some “Menus” (File, Share, View) at the top. These change which part of the Ribbon we can see. Depending upon which Ribbon we are looking at, there will be different Tools available.

We will not be using the “Share” Ribbon today.

The File Ribbon contains lots of useful tools for moving, copying and deleting Files and Folders. We shall come to these later. The first part I would like to show you is the View Ribbon.

We have noticed, while moving around our Folders, that sometimes the Files and Folders will be displayed differently. This can be controlled from the View Ribbon.

The central Section of the Ribbon has a block with several “Layout” options (Note that each Block has its title underneath).

Hovering over each of these Layouts will Preview the display for that layout.

Clicking on a Layout will set the Folder to that Layout.

Have a go at changing the layout of a Folder. Don’t worry if you do not like the new Layout. You can always change it back!

Next …

First, change your View to “Large Icons”.

You will recall that we do this by clicking on the View Menu (Top Left) to see the View Ribbon, and then clicking on “Large Icons”.

The main section of the Window should now show your files and folders as large Icons, with previews of some of them (Which ones are previewed will depend on exactly how your computer is set up and what programs you have installed).

Now, click on the “Sort By” Icon, to the right of the icon-size area. Notice that this has a small down-pointing triangle by it.

The triangle indicated that the Icon has a sub-menu associated with it. When you click, a menu will appear next to your mouse pointer.

Have a look through the options. You may sort the files and folders by Date, or name, or type, or size … NOTE: This does NOT change the way the files and folders are stored. It only changes the way they are displayed on screen!

Usually the files and folders are arranged by Name, with all of the Folders displayed first, and then all of the Files.

Try arranging them by Type. (click “Sort By” and then click “Type”). You will see that all Files of the same Type (e.g. Photos, Letters, spreadsheets) are grouped together.

Aside:

Talking of File Types, I would like to take a moment out to check your File Type Display Settings. This may sound a little daunting, but is actually very simple, and we will not dwell on it.

When you see your Files, do they have a three-letter Extension on the end of their name? (NOTE: Folders never have this. The computer knows they are Folders, and there are no “types” of Folders, so they do not need an “extension”).

If your file-names have Extensions (e.g. “letter.doc”, “P01284.jpg”, “ThankYouCard.pub”), then all is well. You could skip the rest of this section, but I would ask you to read it anyway.

If your file-names do not have Extensions, then I would like you to switch on Extension View. Simpy follow these instructions:

Make sure you are on the View Ribbon.
Click “Options” (far right of Ribbon). This will either open the Options Dialogue Window (if you clicked the higher part of the Icon), or produce a sub-menu, with only one item on it (if you clicked lower). If you get the sub-menu, click on it to open the Options Dialogue Window!
Options Icon
Options Dialogue Window

There should be three “tabs” at the top of this Window. General, View, and Search. Click View. (Notice that these “titles” look similar to the “tags” at the top of Index Cards. In computer terms, we call these titles “tabs”)
You should now see a list of options, with tick-boxes. Look for the one called “Hide Extensions for known types”.
Click the box at the left of this, to ensure that there is NO tick in it. This box should be UN-TICKED. EMPTY. Click it until it is EMPTY. NO TICK.
Click OK, at the bottom of the Window.

You should now have all Files displaying their extensions, and can get back to our Tutorial.

More Sorting

Now that we can see the File Extensions, we can see more clearly how the Sort By Type displays files of the same Type (same extension) together!

For now, set the Sort By back to Name. All Files will be displayed in alphabetical order, regardless of type.

Now that you know how to do this, you may choose to display your files in which ever order you prefer. Remember, this does NOT affect how they are stored, just how they are displayed.

A Manilla Folder, containing some Files.

Remember that we are thinking of Files and Folders as pieces of paper inside Manilla Folders. There may be photos, receipts, letters, and business cards. by choosing to “Sort By Type”, you are saying “put all of the photos together, and all of the receipts together”. If you sort by Date, you are saying “Don’t worry what Type they are, put the newest on top”.

The computer neither knows nor cares what “order” they are in. It just knows that these papers are in that folder, and can display them to you in any order you choose!

The End … For Now …

Practice moving around your Folders, using the Navigation Pane (left hand side) and the main Section. Become familiar with the Back and Up buttons. Change the View of your folders, and Sort By different features.

If you need to, review this post, and have another read of Part One.

You should now have Folders that are easy for you to see, and find content within.

Next, I shall be looking at Organising your Files and Folders!

Hello world!

I have given in to Social Media Pressures, and started a Blog!

Hopefully you will find some useful information here.

The tutorials here start from a very basic level, and will work slowly up to more advanced concepts, starting with “Where Have All My Files Gone?“, which explains the basics of the Windows Files Explorer.

I shall also be featuring some Fun Facts and Hidden Gems from the World of Computers! For instance, have you seen what happens if you search Google for “askew“?

So, have a browse around, see if you find something useful, and don’t forget to let me know what you find interesting, or what I have missed!

P.C. Wizard