Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
◾
Address bar:
The address bar, which appears above the menu bar,
shows the current path. You learned about paths in
Chapter 4,
in
the section
“How Files Are Organized in Folders.”
◾
Status bar:
This bar appears at the bottom of the window and
reports information about the currently displayed or selected loca-
tion or objects.
◾
Search box:
To find a particular file or folder in Windows
Explorer, you can type a part of its name in the Search box and
press Enter. The Search feature looks in files, folders, and objects
in your Outlook data file (if you have one) and looks both at the
filenames and their contents.
Navigating to.Different Locations
When you open Windows Explorer, the location shown depends on
how you opened it. For example, the Start menu has several links on it
that all open different locations (Computer, Documents, Pictures, and
Music). In addition, the Windows Explorer shortcut on the taskbar
opens Windows Explorer to the Libraries window. (You will learn about
libraries later in this chapter.) You can easily navigate to any location in
Windows Explorer, so it doesn't matter from which location you start.
One way to navigate to a different location is to click one of the links in
the navigation pane (the left pane). The navigation pane contains these
expandable sections, as shown in Figure 5.13:
◾
Favorites:
Contains shortcuts for a few common locations, such as
the desktop and Recent Places. You can also add your own location
shortcuts here, for easy access to the locations you use the most.
◾
Libraries:
Contains shortcuts for the Documents, Music, Pictures,
and Videos libraries for the logged-in user account. (They are sepa-
rate for each user account.)
◾
Homegroup:
If your computer is part of a
homegroup
, a link to
it appears. A homegroup is a type of networking used in home and
small-business workgroup environments. You learn more about
networking in
Chapter 8, “Networking and Internet Basics.”
homegroup
A small group of mutually trusted
computers on a peer-to-peer network such as in a
home or small office.
◾
Computer:
Contains a list of all the local volumes in an expandable
folder tree.
◾
Network:
Contains shortcuts for browsing a network if you are
connected to one.
To expand a section, double-click its name, or point to it (so that a white
triangle appears to its left) and then click the triangle to expand it. When
a section is expanded in the folder tree, the triangle next to it appears
black; click the black triangle to collapse the section again.
