WORKSHEET 9

WORKSHEET 9
WINDOWS (v)

USING FIND AND HELP

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INTRODUCTION TO WORKSHEET

This worksheet covers the following topics:

Introduction to the Windows Find tool
Opening and closing Find
Searching for a file
Opening a file directly from the Find tool
Checking the path to a file
Putting a shortcut to Windows Explorer on the Desktop
More advanced searches using Find
Using the Date Modified tab
Using the Advanced tab
Introduction to the Help tool
Opening and closing Help for Windows
Using the Index in Help
Using Contents in Help
Help in other applications

Mouse instructions

"Click", as used here, always means click once with the left mouse button.
"Double click", as used here, always means double click with the left mouse button
"Right click", as used here, always means click once with the right mouse button

Instructions

All instructions which you should carry out on your own computer look like this example:

Open a new Word document

INTRODUCTION TO THE WINDOWS FIND TOOL

The Windows Find Tool is exactly what its name suggests, it's a tool which helps you find things, namely files, folders, programs, etc on your computer. It is useful, for example, when you want to find something you have lost, or when you want to create a shortcut to something (eg Windows Explorer).

OPENING AND CLOSING FIND

To open Find:

Click the Start button
Run your mouse over Find and then click on Files or Folders from the box on the right, like this:

This will open the following dialogue box:

In order to learn how to use Find, we are first going to look for something which we haven't lost! But for the moment:

Close the Find dialogue box by clicking on the X in the top right hand corner.

SEARCHING FOR A FILE

In this section, you are going to use Find to search for a file on your hard disk. To begin:

Find one of your own Word documents and write down its name on a piece of paper.
Then open the Find tool again.

Now you are ready to start your search. You are going to search for the file whose name you have just written down.

First type in the name of the file you are looking for in the "Named" box.

I am going to look for a file called "Spain 2000", like this:

Next, you need to tell the Find tool where to look for this file. This will usually be somewhere on your hard drive. To tell Find to look on your hard drive:

Click on the triangle next to the "Look in" box. (This will make a drop down menu appear.)
Choose (C:) or Hard drives.

(If you wanted to look for something on a floppy disk, you could do this by inserting a floppy disk in the floppy disk drive and then selecting 3½ Floppy (A:) at this stage).

Make sure the "Include subfolders" box is ticked
Then click on Find now.

Whilst Find is looking for your file, the blue magnifying glass on the right will rotate. When Find has finished searching, it will display the results in a box, like this:

As you can see, whilst looking for this file, Find found 277 files on my computer with a similar name. This is because Find looks for any files which contain any of the words you enter in the Named box. In this case, a lot of files were found because many files contain the number "2000" in them. I used the scroll bar on the right to scroll through the results to find the file I was looking for.

A better way of finding this file would be to simply enter the most unusual part of the filename, eg Spain. Here are the results from this search:

Notice that this time only 11 files were found. Notice also that Find found files such as Mspaint.cnt because the word Mspaint contains the word Spain!

OPENING A FILE DIRECTLY FROM THE FIND TOOL

If I want to open this file, I can do this simply by double clicking on the icon in the results box.

CHECKING THE PATH TO A FILE

I can also use the Find results to find out the address of a file, ie the path to it on the tree. In the above example, I can see the first part of the path is C:\My Documents\P… However, the three dots at the end tell me that I cannot see the whole path. To show the complete path:

Maximise the Find window
Pass your mouse over the line separating the "In Folder" column title from the "Size" column title until the cursor changes into a cross
Drag the edge of the "In Folder" column to the right until you can see the whole path, like this:

Now I can see the whole path, which is:

C:\My Documents\Phil\Personal\CAMPING

In this way, it is possible to find out the exact location of a file on the hard disk.

PUTTING A SHORTCUT TO WINDOWS EXPLORER ON THE DESKTOP

Now let's use Find to help us put a shortcut to Windows Explorer on the Desktop. We need to use Find because, to make a shortcut, we need to locate the Explorer program on the hard disk.

To find where the Explorer program is stored on your hard disk, carry out a search using the Find tool.

Open Find
Type "Explorer" into the Named box
Make sure Find will look in (C:) or your hard drives and all sub-folders and click on Find Now

When you get the results, look for the file called Explorer (or Windows NT Explorer or something similar) which has a small computer as an icon. The file type should be "application", like this:

As you can see, on my computer, the path to Windows Explorer is C:\WIN95. Write down this path on a piece of paper. You now need to use My Computer to navigate to Windows Explorer on the tree and create a shortcut:

Open My Computer
Navigate to Windows Explorer. (Follow the path you wrote down. In my case I double click on C and then again on Win95). This opens the following window:

At first site, you may think Windows Explorer is not here as it is not visible. But on closer inspection you will notice that there are 290 objects (files and folders) in Win95, so we need to look a bit harder.

You could use the scroll bar at the bottom of the window to reveal more objects, but the best thing is to maximise the window, which will give you a window which looks something like this:

Now you can see the Windows Explorer program. You are now ready to make a shortcut on the Desktop. The easiest way to do this is:

Right click (once) on the Windows Explorer icon.
Run your Mouse over Send To and then left click (once) on "Desktop (create shortcut)", like this:

This will create a shortcut on your Desktop which should look something like this:

MORE ADVANCED SEARCHES USING FIND

So far we have only used Find to look for files whose names we know. However, it is also possible to search for files even if you are not sure of the exact name, or can't remember the name at all. To see how to do this, let's go back to the Find tool dialogue box:

By clicking on the Date Modified or Advanced tabs, you can search for files whose names you don't know or have forgotten.

USING THE DATE MODIFIED TAB

Clicking on the Date Modified tab will give you a dialogue box, like the one shown below. Here you can look for a file, even if you don't know it's name, by guessing roughly when you last looked at it or created it and by filling in the appropriate dates. For example, if you think you last looked at the file some time around the middle of February 2001, you might enter the following details:

To do this:

Open the Find tool from the Start button
Click on the Date Modified tab
Click on the button next to "between"
Use the delete button and type in the new dates.

Clicking Find Now will of course begin the search.

Notice that by clicking the other buttons, you can look for files you have created or modified during the last month(s) or day(s). (Use the up and down buttons in the little box to adjust the number of days or months)

USING THE ADVANCED TAB

Clicking on the Advanced tab will bring up the dialogue box shown below. As you can see, here you can search for:

a file of a certain type (eg an Excel spreadsheet or a picture) - click on the triangle next to the "Of type" box and select the sort of file you are looking for
a file containing some specific text - type the text in the "Containing text" box"
a file of a certain size in KB - use the up and down buttons in the KB box to set the size and use the black triangle in the "Size is" box to select a minimum or maximum size.

INTRODUCTION TO THE HELP TOOL

If you forget how to do something on your computer, or want to learn how to do something you have never done before, a good place to look for instructions is in Help.

All Microsoft applications have a specific Help tool and Windows is no exception.

OPENING AND CLOSING HELP FOR WINDOWS

To open Help for Windows:

Click on the Start button
Click on Help

This will open the following window:

You can search for help on different topics in the Help tool, by looking for a topic in the index (above), by using the Contents tab (just like the list of contents in a book) or by using the Find tab.

To close Help, click on the X in the top right-hand corner of the window or click on the Cancel button in the bottom right-hand corner.

USING THE INDEX IN HELP

Imagine you want to revise how to copy a file to the floppy disk. Here is how to find the instructions using the index in Help.

Open Help using the Start button
Type "copy" in the box 1 near the top of the window

This will give you the following:

Look for "files to a floppy disk" in the list of copy topics and then

Double click on "files to a floppy disk" (or highlight it and click on Display)

This will then give you a list of instructions something like this:

In this way, you can search for help on any Windows topic.

USING CONTENTS IN HELP

You can also look through Help using the Contents tab:

Open Help using the Start button
Click on the Contents tab
Explore the different topics by double clicking on a topic to open it (or highlight a topic and click on Open)

HELP IN OTHER APPLICATIONS

All Microsoft applications have a Help tool built into them. If you want help with Windows, you have to use the Windows Help tool just described. If you want help with Word or Outlook Express, you must use the Word Help tool or the Outlook Express Help tool.

To find the Help tool for applications other than Windows, do not use the Start button. Open the application in question (eg Outlook Express) and click on Help which is on the Menu Bar at the top of the window. Then click on Contents and Index.

_____________________________________________________________

That is the end of this worksheet. I hope you have been successful. If you have found any inaccuracies or found any of the instructions confusing, please contact me, Phil Brabbs, at brabbs@volny.cz

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