Chapter 8: Managing Files and Folders

What Are Properties of Files and Folders?

Like almost everything else in Windows, files and folders have properties--information about a file or folder you can access and, perhaps, change without opening the file or folder.

To view this information and make changes, select the file or folder in Windows Explorer, and then choose File | Properties (or right-click the file or folder and select Properties from the shortcut menu). The Properties dialog box appears, with the General tab selected (see Figure 8-1).

Figure 8-1: The properties of a file

The General tab of a file's Properties dialog box displays the file's

• Name and icon
• File type
• The default application that opens files of this type
• Location in the folder tree
• Size (including both the actual size of the file and the slightly larger amount of disk space allocated to the file)
• Date and time of creation, most recent modification, and most recent access
• Attributes (see the next section)

Depending on a file's type, it may have additional tabs of properties that you can access by clicking them individually. The properties of most image files, for example, include a Summary tab where you can enter the kind of information people write on the backs of photographs: who took the picture, who the people in the picture are, and so on.

Because a folder is technically a special kind of file, the General tab of its properties dialog box contains much of the same information: icon, name, type (File Folder), location, size (the number of bytes taken up by the folder and all its contents, including the contents of subfolders), date created, and attributes. The General tab has one additional item: Contains, which reports the number of files and folders contained in the folder and all its subfolders.

For some folders (such as folders that people or programs create, rather than folders that come with Windows), the Properties dialog box includes a Customize tab, which enables you to control what the folder looks like, both when it appears as an icon and when you open the folder. The Customize tab includes these settings:

• Use This Folder Type As A Template, with a list of predefined folder templates. The default template is Documents. If the folder will contain pictures or music, choose one of the other options so that Windows can include Picture Tasks or Music Tasks in the Task pane when you open the folder. You can click the Also Apply This Template To All Subfolders if the folder contains subfolders with the same types of files.
• Folder pictures and folder icons enable you to control how the folder's icon looks. If you have a picture that you would like to appear as part of the folder icon in Thumbnails view, click Choose Picture and select it. To control how the folder icon looks in other views, click the Change Icon button and choose another icon.

If your computer is on a local area network, folders also have a Sharing tab, with information about whether the folder (and the files and folders it contains) is shared on the network. Folders may also have a Security tab to control who may see its contents.

To find the total size of a group of files and folders, select them all, and then right-click anywhere in the selected filenames. Choose Properties from the shortcut menu. Windows displays the total number of files and folders, as well as their combined size. Note that you can't select multiple folders in the Folder Explorer bar--display the list of files and folders in the working area of the Explorer window.