The ever-important Save As dialog box
2. Typically, the Save In drop-down list in the dialog box will suggest your My Documents
folder as the place to save the document. If it doesn’t, you can choose My Documents from
that drop-down list, or from the buttons at the left side of the dialog box, or from the list of
folders shown below the Save In dialog box (if it’s available here).
Tip Remember, documents that you save in My Documents aren’t accessible to other people
who use this computer. If you want to share this document with others, choose Shared
Documents from the Save In drop-down list.
3. Next to File Name, type in a name for the document. Try to think of a name that will make it
easy to identify the document later. Try to limit the name to three or four words, maximum,
so you don’t end up with extremely long file names cluttering up your Windows Explorer
window in the future.
4. Click the Save button.
The Save As dialog box closes and you’re returned to your program and document. You might notice
the title bar of the program now shows the name of the document on which you’re working.
When you save a document, you save all work you’ve done up until the moment you save. If you
change or add to the document, you must specifically save the document again to save those changes
or additions. To save a document that already has a file name, choose File Save from the program’s
menu bar once again. Alternatively, you can click the little Save button in the toolbar (if any), or press
Ctrl+S. You won’t be prompted to enter a file name again because you already gave the document a file
name the first time you saved it. However, rest assured that the copy of the document that’s safely
stored on your disk exactly matches the copy you’re now viewing on your screen.
Tip Many programs offer an “autosave” feature that will automatically save your work
from time to time. This is a great safety device. To see whether a program offers
this feature, search its help for the term autosave.
If you ever want to save the current version of a document under a new name, so that you don’t alter
the original copy, choose File Save As from the program’s menu bar. There you can enter a new
name for this copy. Your original copy will remain unchanged, with the file name you originally gave to it.

Using the program

Every program is different, so no hard-and-fast rules apply to all programs. However, most programs do
share some common themes. For example, most programs provide access to their features via menu
commands, which you can get to by clicking the options in the menu bar near the top of the window.
Many programs offer toolbars, which just provide simple one-click access to the more commonly used
menu commands.
Even though all programs are different, and therefore offer different commands, many programs’ menu
bars offer the options in this list:
• File: Use this menu to open, save, and close documents, as well as to print the document
currently shown within the program’s document area.
• Edit: Use this menu to access basic editing commands, as well as Cut, Copy, and Paste, for
copying and moving items within a document, or from one document to another.
• View: Use this menu to hide and display toolbars and to choose different ways to view the
document you’re working on.
• Format: Use this menu to format (change something about the appearance of) something
within the document.
• Tools: This menu contains any special tools that the program offers. It also might offer an
Options or Preferences option, which enables you to better tailor certain features of the
program to your own needs.
• Window: If the program you’re using enables you to have several documents open at the
same time, the Window menu will provide options for arranging the document windows,
and for easily jumping from one window to the next.
• Help: As you know, this menu provides help for the program.
Most programs that enable you to edit documents work on a “select, then do” basis. First select the item
within the document that you want to change, move, edit, delete, or whatever. To select text, drag the
mouse pointer through it. To select a picture, click the picture. After you’ve made a selection, you’ll
typically find the commands for working with the selected item on the Edit or Format menu.

Figure 2-20: The Filmstrip view of my My Pictures folders
Buttons in the upper pane enable you to move to the next or preceding picture, zoom in on any part of
the picture, and zoom back out, choose between “best fit” and “actual size” for sizing the picture, as well
as to rotate the picture clockwise and counterclockwise. To leave the Filmstrip view, just choose any
other option from the Views button or View menu.
Choosing details to view
As mentioned, the Details view shows details about each icon in the folder you’re viewing at the
moment, as in the example shown in Figure 2-21.
Figure 2-21: A folder’s contents displayed in Details view
You can custom design the Details view for the folder you’re viewing at the moment by following these
steps:
1. Choose View › Choose Details from the Explorer menu bar to open the Choose Details
dialog box shown in Figure 2-22.

Umpteen ways to view files and folders
Explorer offers many different ways to view the icons in its right pane. Choosing one view over another
is just a matter of what’s convenient at the moment. To change the view, you can click the Views button
in the toolbar and make your selection from the menu that appears. Alternatively, choose View from the
Explorer menu bar and select a view from the menu that opens. Your have the following choices:
Thumbnails: Displays the contents of any pictures in the current folder as small thumbnailsized
images. Folders and files that don’t contain pictures just appear as large icons.
Tiles: Shows information about each file and folder (as available) beneath the item’s name,
as in the example shown in Figure 2-18.
Icons: Shows just an icon and name for each file and folder.
List: Reduces the size of the icons to about the same size as corresponding text, and
presents the information in a list.
Details: Shows detailed information about each icon, including its size (except in the case
of folders), type, and the date and time the item was last modified. Although as discussed
later, you can choose for yourself what you want the Details view to display.
The Thumbnails and Details views offer some extra unique options, discussed in the sections that
follow.

The New Explorer Bar

The Explorer window, shown in Figure 2-18, is currently divided into two panes. The left pane is called
the Explorer bar. The Explorer bar contains three drop-down bars, as described in the following list.
Tasks: Provides quick access to tasks you might want to perform at the moment. The
tasks available to you will change as you make different selections from the rightmost
pane. Clicking an option will start the selected task.
Other Places: Lists other places on your computer that you can jump to within Explorer.
When you click one of those options, the right pane changes to show the contents of that
new location. The Back button in the toolbar takes you back to wherever you just left.
Details: Shows detailed information about the current location, or the selected file or
folder in the right pane.
You can open or close the Tasks, Other Places, or Details portion of the bar by clicking the small button
to the right of the title.
A couple of good things to know about the Explorer bar, right off the bat. . . . First, if you resize the
Explorer window, the Explorer bar automatically disappears (which is helpful if you get to a point when
leaving it open would prevent the contents of the right pane from being displayed). Second, the Explorer
bar is optional and may not be visible at all if someone else has disabled it. If you can’t see the Explorer
bar, no matter how large you make the window, you can turn it back on by following these steps:
1. Choose Tools › Folder Options from the Explorer menu bar.
2. On the General tab, choose Show Common Tasks in Folders.
3. Click the OK button to close the Folder Options dialog box.
The rightmost pane displays the contents of whatever it is you’re exploring at the moment. In Figure 2-
18, for example, I can see that my My Documents folder currently contains several additional folders,
including My Music and My Pictures. There also are a couple of documents in there, named Resume
and My First WordPad Document. Note that the folders all have icons that look like manila file folders.
Documents will have other icons. As you know, you can open any icon just by clicking or double-clicking
the icon. If you open a folder icon, you’ll see the contents of that folder within Explorer. The Explorer title
bar will then display the name of the currently open folder. To return to My Documents, click the Back
button on the Explorer toolbar.
If you open a document icon, the document will open in whatever program is associated with the type of
document you opened. For example, opening the My First WordPad Document icon in the figure opens
that document in Microsoft Word (if it’s installed) or the Windows WordPad program (if Microsoft Word
isn’t available). The program’s window covers (or overlaps) the Explorer window. From within the open
program, you can then edit, print, or do whatever else the program enables you to do. After you have
finished working with the document, you can close the program (by clicking its Close button).

Copying text and pictures
The ability to cut and paste into text boxes is also a huge timesaver. If the information that you need to
type into a text box is visible just about anywhere on the screen or available someplace where you can
get it to the screen, there’s never any need to retype it. Just select the text that you want to copy into the
text box by dragging the mouse pointer through that text. Then, press Ctrl+C to copy the selected text to
the Windows Clipboard (which is an invisible placeholder for cut and copied text). Then click in the text
box into which you need to type the text, so it gets the blinking cursor, and press Ctrl+V. The text lands
in the text box.
The Ctrl+C (Copy) shortcut, and Ctrl+V (Paste) shortcut are supported universally throughout Windows
and Windows programs. You can use these keys to copy just about anything to just about anything else.
If you’re not sure, don’t be afraid to try it out. You cannot do any harm by trying! The same technique
works for pictures as well. To select a picture, however, you don’t drag the mouse pointer. Instead, you
just click the picture to select it, and then press Ctrl+C. To paste the picture into a graphics program or
word processing document, click at about where you want to place the picture, and then press Ctrl+V.
Often you can even do it without even touching the keyboard. Just drag the mouse pointer through the
text you want to copy, or click the picture you want to copy. Then right-click the selected text or picture
and choose Copy. Then right-click where you want to paste and choose Paste.
Tip If, for whatever reason, you cannot copy a picture on the screen into the Clipboard,
you can always take a snapshot of the screen and paste that into your word
processing document or graphics program. The section titled “Screenshots” in
Chapter 24 explains how.

Changing text

Several general rules apply to typing and editing (changing) text in text boxes, as well as most forms of
text in general. To make simple changes or corrections, you can position the blinking cursor where you
want to make a change, either by clicking the spot or by using the arrow keys. Then:
To delete the character to the right of the cursor, press the Delete (Del) key.
To delete the character to the left of the cursor, press the Backspace key.
To insert new text, start typing.
To choose between Insert and Overwrite mode, press the Insert (Ins) key.
Let me explain the difference between Insert mode and Overwrite mode. Let’s say a text box already
contains this text:
Wanda Starr
Next, you place the cursor just to the left of the S in Starr. If you then type Bea and a space, in Insert
mode, the new text is inserted, like this:
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Wanda Bea Starr
If you were to type Bea followed by a blank space in Overwrite mode, the new text would replace
existing text, like this:
Wanda Bea r
In the preceding example, the new letters Bea and the blank space that follows have replaced the
letters Star.

Figure 2-16: Scroll bars in this window indicate that’s there more than can be seen at the moment.
Vertical and horizontal scroll bars in the right pane tell me that there are more icons to view both below,
and to the right, which I can scroll into view. All scroll bars consist of a slider box, a slider bar, and a
couple of buttons
Figure 2-17: The anatomy of a scroll bar
The size of the slider box relative to the size of the slider bar gives you a sense of how much additional
information is available. If the slider box is about 10 percent of the size of the slider bar, about 90
percent of the available information is currently scrolled out of view. You can use any of the following
techniques to scroll through the additional information:
To move up or down a little bit at a time, click the up- or down-arrow button at the end of the
taskbar.
To move more quickly than that, drag the slider box through the slider bar.
To jump to a specific part of the list, click within the slider bar at about where you want to
position the slider box.
If your mouse has a wheel, you may be able to scroll vertically by spinning the mouse
wheel. (I say may be able to, because the wheel doesn’t work in all programs.)
Tip If your wheel doesn’t work right off the bat, click the scroll bar, or just to the left of
the scroll bar. Then try again. It might work this time.
If your hands are super-glued to the keyboard and don’t want to use the mouse, you can use the
Page Up (PgUP), ˇ Page Down (PgDn) keys to scroll vertically. To jump to the top of the list, press the
Home key. To jump to the end of the list, press the End key. If a horizontal scroll bar is available as well,
you can use the ‹ and › keys to scroll left and right.
Text boxes
Text boxes appear wherever you need to type in some information. Before you can type in a text box,
however, the blinking cursor needs to be in the text box. To move the cursor into the text box, just click
the text box. Alternatively, press the Tab or Shift+Tab keys to move through the available controls until
the cursor lands in the text box. Then start typing.

Figure 2-15: The Background control here is an example of a list.
To choose an option from a list, click it. If the list has a scroll bar, you can use any of the techniques
described in the next section to scroll through the list and view additional options.
You also can make selections from a list box using the keyboard. Press Tab or Shift+Tab until the focus
(the gray frame) is inside the list box. Then use the up- and down-arrow keys to move the highlighter to
the option you want and press Enter.
Scroll bars
Scroll bars, as mentioned, enable you to scroll through lengthy lists of items. They usually appear to the
right of a lengthy list. However, scroll bars aren’t limited to dialog boxes. They appear any time there’s
more information that can be seen at the moment. In Figure 2-16, for example, I’m viewing the contents
of my My Music folder, using the Windows Explorer program (which isn’t a dialog box at all!). The scroll
bar near the middle of the window is actually attached to the Explorer bar on the left side of the window.
Which tells me that there’s more information below in the Explorer bar.

Spin buttons

If a text box displays a number, a date, or a time, the text box may have a pair of little spin buttons
attached to it, such as the Wait option in Figure 2-14. Click the up button to increase the number, or the
down button to decrease the number. Optionally, you can just drag the mouse pointer through the
contents of the box, and type in a new number.
Lists
A list or list box is a list of alternative options. It’s similar to a drop-down list, except the list is already
open — you don’t need to click any button to view the list. In Figure 2-15, the Background control
presents a list of backgrounds from which to choose. There are more items in the list than are currently
visible, as indicated by the scroll bar to the right of the list.

Check boxes

Check boxes, like the examples shown in the in Figure 2-12, enable you to turn some option on or off.
(That figure is showing the Taskbar tab of the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box.) Unlike
option buttons, check boxes are not mutually exclusive. You can select any combination of check boxes
you want. When a check box is selected (contains an X or a check mark), the option is turned on. When
the check box is empty (clear), the option is turned off. If the check box is gray in the middle, that
usually means that some, but not all, of a subset of options is selected. (Don’t worry about that right
now.) To select — or clear — a check box, click it. Often you can click the text to the right of a check
box to turn it on and off.

Preview area

Some dialog boxes offer a preview area, which is an area of the dialog box that gives you a preview of
how the applied selection will affect the object. For example, the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties
dialog box shown in Figure 2-11 contains a preview of the Start menu. Choosing one of the option
buttons below the preview area shows you how your selection will change the appearance of the Start
menu. Therefore, if you don’t like what you see in the preview area, you can switch back to the other
option before you actually apply the change to the real Start menu.

Figure 2-10:

An example of buttons
If your hands happen to be on the keyboard rather than the mouse and you want to choose a button,
you can press the Tab key to move forward from one control to the next, or you can press Shift+Tab to
move backward through the controls until the button you want to press is highlighted with a dotted line.
Then press Enter to push that highlighted button.
The buttons play an important role in dialog boxes. Keeping them straight is important. Remember
these important points:
The Apply button (if available and enabled) applies your selection right now, without closing
the dialog box.
The OK button applies your selection(s) and then closes the dialog box.
The Cancel button (or pressing the Esc key) closes the dialog box without applying or
saving any options you selected. However, it does not undo any selections you have
already applied!
Any button that appears to be dim is currently disabled, and clicking it will do you no good.
The button will become enabled again once it can serve some purpose. For example, the
Apply button will be enabled only after you make some selection that you can apply.
Don’t forget the handy Help (?) button displayed near the top of many dialog boxes. You can click this
button and then click any option within the dialog box to learn more about that option.

Buttons

Buttons are simple. You click them with your mouse. If a button has an underlined letter in its label, you
can optionally hold down the Alt key and press the key that represents the underlined letter. For
example, as an alternative to clicking a button labeled Pattern, you can press Alt+P.
You might notice one button in a group has a slightly darker appearance than the others, such as the
OK button shown in Figure 2-10. That button is called the default button and, as an alternative to
clicking directly on that button, you can press the Enter key. Many dialog boxes also have a Cancel
button, which enables you to escape gracefully from the dialog box without saving any changes. As an
alternative to clicking the Cancel button, you can press the Esc key or click the Close (X) button in the
upper-right corner of the dialog box.

Using Dialog Boxes

A dialog box is sort of like a window. Instead of representing an entire program, however, a dialog box
generally contains some simple settings from which you can choose. The term dialog box comes from
the fact that you carry on a kind of “dialogue” with the box by making selections from the options it
presents. Controls within a dialog box are similar to the controls on any other kind of machine, be it a
car, dishwasher, or stereo. Controls enable you to control how a program behaves and looks.
As you may recall, many objects on your screen have properties, characteristics such as size, color,
and so forth that you can change. If an object does offer properties that you can change, right-clicking
the object and choosing Properties from the shortcut menu will take you directly to the Properties dialog
box for that particular object. For example, the desktop itself has properties that you can alter. If you
right-click the desktop “proper” (not the taskbar, not an icon, not an open window) and choose
Properties, you’ll come to the Display Properties dialog box shown in Figure 2-8.
Figure 2-8: The Display Properties dialog box
Tip The Properties dialog boxes for many objects also are available in the Control
Panel, which you can get to by choosing the Control Panel option from the Start
menu.
Within the dialog box, you see examples of some common controls. The following sections explain how
to work all the different kinds of controls you may come across in your daily use of Windows. The
sample Display Properties dialog box doesn’t offer all the controls discussed here. But trust me, you will
eventually come across all the controls described in the next few sections.
Tabs
Some dialog boxes contain more controls than can actually fit into the box. In this case, options are split
into two or more tabs. For example, the Display Properties dialog box contains the tabs shown in Figure
2-9. To view the options offered by a tab, click the tab you want. Alternatively, you can hold down the
Ctrl key while pressing the Tab key to move from one tab to the next. Pressing Ctrl+Shift+Tab moves
through the tabs in the opposite order, from right to left.

Cascading and tiling open windows

You can instantly arrange all the open windows on the desktop with just a couple of mouse clicks. Just
to the left of the Notifications area in the taskbar is a neutral area that never gets covered by buttons.
Right-clicking that neutral area displays the menu shown near that area in Figure 2-7. Options on that
menu for arranging open windows are summarized in the following list:
Cascade: Stacks open programs from the upper-left corner of the desktop with just their
title bars showing, as in Figure 2-7.
Figure 2-7: The taskbar’s right-click menu revealed near the Notifications area of the taskbar. Open windows
on this desktop are cascaded.
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Tile Windows Horizontally: Sizes windows equally (if possible) and presents them as tiles
with no overlap. If there are only two or three windows open, each is stretched lengthwise
across the screen.
Tile Windows Vertically: As above, but windows are stretched to the height of the screen.
Show the Desktop: Hides all open windows, leaving only their taskbar buttons visible
(same as clicking the Show Desktop button in the Quick Launch toolbar).
Undo: Undoes whichever option you last selected.
Note Calculator is unique in that its window cannot be resized. The reason that the
Calculator window is as large as it is in Figure 2-7 is because I switched to the
Scientific calculator by choosing View › Scientific from the Calculator’s toolbar.
When the desktop is crowded, consider minimizing all the open windows. Then click the taskbar button
for the program you want to work with, to open only its window on the desktop.

Now here are two ways in which you can make any open window the active window, with just a click of
the mouse:
Click on any visible portion of the window that you want to make active.
Alternatively, click the toolbar button for the window you want to make active (very handy if
that window is completely covered by other windows on the desktop!).
Instantly, the window pops to the top of the stack, no longer obscured by other windows. You then can
use the keyboard to work within that window if you like.
You also can use the keyboard, if you want, to make any open window the active window. Just hold
down the Alt key, and press the Tab key. A small box containing an icon for each open window appears.
Without releasing the Alt key, press the Tab key repeatedly until the title of the window you want to
make active displays. Then release the Alt key.
Tip The buttons in the taskbar will get smaller and smaller as you open more windows.
If you cannot read a toolbar button’s label, just point to the button. The full label will
appear in a ToolTip.
The bottom line is this: If you do something at the keyboard, and nothing happens (or something
unexpected happens), there’s a good chance that you weren’t paying attention to which window was the
active window at the moment. You can easily make any open window the active window by clicking
anywhere on that window, or by clicking the window’s toolbar button.

The active window

When you have two or more windows open on the desktop, only one window is the active window. If
you use the keyboard at all, it’s important to know which of those windows is currently the active
window, because that’s the only window that can accept keyboard input. If I were to try to type text into
the WordPad document shown in Figure 2-6 right now, no text would appear in the window. Why?
Because currently the Calculator program is in the active window, and only the program in the active
window will respond to input from the keyboard. The problem is easily solved. Just click anywhere on
WordPad’s window to make it the active window, and start typing.
If you look at the taskbar in Figure 2-6, you’ll notice that it now contains four new buttons labeled
WordPad Doc, Solitaire, Calculator, and My Computer (which actually represents the Windows Explorer
program, as discussed later). The taskbar always displays a button for each “running task” — that is,
each open program on the desktop. You can usually tell, at a glance, which window on the desktop is
currently the active window by the following clues:
The taskbar button for the active window is colored a little differently, and appears “pushed
in.”
The title bar for the active window is a little brighter than the title bars of the inactive
windows.
The active window is always at the “top of the stack.” That is, no other windows overlap the
active window.

Document area

Programs designed to help you create and edit things generally offer a large document area where your
work appears. The document might be a photograph, drawing, spreadsheet, written text . . . whatever. It
all depends on what the specific program you’re using at the moment is designed to do. We’ll get
deeper into the concepts of working with documents in Chapter 3. For now, let’s continue to look at tools
and techniques for managing open windows on your desktop.
System menu
The System menu enables you to move, size, and close the window by using the keyboard rather than
the mouse. You might find this handy if you do a lot of typing and prefer not to take your hands off the
keyboard to manage a window. To open the System menu, press Alt+Spacebar (hold down the Alt key,
press and release the spacebar, and then release the Alt key) or click the System menu icon in the
upper-left corner of the window. When the System menu is open, you can choose options in the usual
manner. Click the option you want. Alternatively, on the keyboard, type the underlined letter of the
option you want; for example, type the letter N to choose the Minimize option.

Status bar

The status bar along the bottom of a window plays different roles in different programs. However, a
common role is to display helpful information. For example, the status bar at the bottom of the WordPad
window often displays the helpful message For Help, press F1 to let you know that help is
available for the program. When you point to a toolbar button in WordPad, the status bar message
changes to describe the purpose of that button.
Tip Virtually any program you use will also offer a Help option in its menu bar, which
you can choose to get help with that particular program.
Like toolbars, a program’s status bar is often optional. You can usually turn it on and off by choosing
View › Status Bar from the program’s menus.