How To Find and Delete Files

1. First you need to know where you store your files. If most of the files you make are in My Documents (which is typical), then all you need to do is double-click My Documents and find the files that you want to delete. (To find a specific file, you need the name...then you click on Start, then Find/Search and type in the name of the file.)

2. If you don't know where most of your files go when you save them and you only open them from within your program by going into the menu and clicking on Open, then you need to do the following: Go into your program and then click on File, then Save as... and then click the down button next the words: Save in, as seen in the following picture: As you can see, the files on this computer are saved in the C drive, under the folder C:/My Documents/my files/lyrics. So, to find those, you'd click on either My Computer or My Documents and then click on the appropriate folders (in this case, my files and then lyrics).





3. To delete more than one file at a time, hold CTRL while you click. 

4. You may want to view your files another way. To do this, you must click on View (after going into the folder that you will delete files from) and choose one of the following choices: Large Icons, Small Icons, List, or Details. I recommend details as it shows when the files were made. It also offers some flexibility in viewing you files as you will see in my next instruction(s):

5. After choosing  Details, you will see columns with the following headings: Name , Size, Type, and Modified. If you click on any of these gray headings, the files will be listed in ascending or descending order according to the heading you clicked. For example, if you click on Name, then the files will be listed by name (which should be the default). You can also list them by Type, which is useful if you want to see all your pictures or documents or whatever. And if you are looking for old or new files, then you can click on Modified and have them listed that way.

6. To Delete, you can either hit the Delete key on your keyboard (which is in that set of 6 buttons above the arrow keys) or you can go click on File and choose Delete from there or you could click on the button labeled Delete (with an X) at the top of the screen along with other handy buttons, like Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, etc...

If you need another copy or an updated version of this paper, go to the homeschool website and download it:  http://iowahomeschool.tripod.com