Files, folders and settings
This course is for people who use computers at work or at home but were never properly taught. You may have learned by watching someone else, and that is fine. Here we fill in the gaps calmly, one step at a time. Nobody will rush you, and there are no silly questions.
When your computer starts, you see the desktop: the background picture, some icons, and a bar along the bottom called the taskbar. The taskbar shows the programs that are open and the Start button, which opens a list of everything installed.
A file is one piece of saved work: a letter, a photo, a spreadsheet, a PDF someone sent you. Every file has a name and a type. The type is shown by the last few letters after a dot, such as .docx for a Word document, .xlsx for a spreadsheet, .pdf for a PDF and .jpg for a photo.
A folder holds files, and can hold other folders. Think of a filing cabinet: the cabinet is your computer, each drawer is a folder, and inside each drawer are paper files, sometimes in smaller folders.
Open File Explorer (the yellow folder icon on the taskbar). On the left you will see places like Documents, Downloads, Pictures and Desktop. These are the main drawers.
Most confusion comes from not knowing where something was saved. Some simple rules help:
In File Explorer, open Documents, right click an empty space, choose New, then Folder, type a name like "Business 2026" and press Enter. Create folders inside it for "Invoices", "Letters" and "Receipts".
Give files names you will understand later. "Letter.docx" tells you nothing. "2026-03 Letter to landlord about rent.docx" tells you what it is and when. Putting the year and month first keeps files in date order.
If you know where your work is and what it is called, you can always find it again. That single habit saves more time than any shortcut.
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