Drag and Drop

     If you're going to be using a computer to create or modify documents, whether they be text, images, video, or whatever, the smart thing to do is to become thoroughly familiar with how to keep up with your files.  A person that doesn't don't do that should expect to be frantically searching for an important file later.  All versions of Windows have a built in file manager.  In version 3.1, it was called File Manager.  Now a person usually goes through something like My Computer, My Documents, or Windows Explorer to access and manage their files.  
     After a while of collecting or creating various files, it may become apparent that having appropriately titled folders to store them in helps greatly to keep everything in it's place.  It also makes archiving a breeze.  (See the section on backing up files.)  If you already have a folder called My Documents, we'll use that for these examples.  If not, just right-click once on the desktop, then scroll down to where it says New, over to Folder, then left-click once.  Enter whatever name you like, but for now, I'm just going to refer to it as the MD (for My Documents) folder.  If you don't like the name you've given the folder, just right-click, scroll down to rename, left click, and type something that's more suitable.  (Note:this also works for nearly any file, but if you're not careful with the naming scheme, you can make a file unusable until you return it to the correct name.  Also, you usually don't want to go around renaming certain folders for programs already installed in Windows, as that can make the application not run.  When in doubt, don't.)
     Now, double click the MD folder.  Some of you may already have things in here.  If so, just right-click on the white area, and make a new folder called stuff.  pick one of the items in the MD folder.  left-click and hold the button down on that object.  While holding the button down, slide the object over the top of the stuff folder and let go.  Now it's in there.  If you happened to not have anything in the MD folder, just make another folder called stuff2.  Then put stuff2 into stuff, or vice versa.
     If you're going to be doing a lot of dragging files around and dropping them into appropriate folders (pictures with pictures, word processing documents in a folder for typed documents, etc.) then you'll most likely enjoy using Windows Explorer better.  Usually you go to Start, then up to Programs, and find it in there.  You can get a better view of what's on your hard drive and move them around to where they need to go.  Obviously, you should be really careful in here, because as I stated before, moving or deleting files that programs need can cause major problems.  Just stick with the files that you already have been using and you should be fine.

If you remember the name of the file, but are not sure where it is, you can use the Search feature in Windows.  Go to Start, then up to either Search or Find, depending on what version of Windows you have.  Type in the name of the file, and usually you want to be sure that the search is being done on C:  usually called local drive.  When you find the file there, be sure that you have My Documents or whatever folder you want it to be in open.  You can drag and drop it there.

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