A guide for users of the Jaws screen reader, written by David Bailes. More guides are available on the Jaws Guides page of the VIP Software Guides website.
This is a guide to File Explorer on Windows 10. In Windows 7, and versions of Windows before that, the equivalent program was called Windows Explorer.
File Explorer's uses include browsing or searching the contents of disks, folders and libraries, opening files, deleting files and folders, renaming them, copying and moving them around, and creating new folders. One way of opening File Explorer is to press Windows Key + E, and other ways are described later in the guide.
File Explorer uses a ribbon, rather than a traditional menu bar and toolbars. If you're not familiar with using ribbons, then it's recommended that you read the Ribbon section of this guide, where the ribbon, and the keystrokes to use it are described in detail.
Note that unlike in most programs, the ribbon is minimized by default. You'll probably want to turn off this minimization, and instructions for doing so are given in the Turn off the minimization of the ribbon section of the Customizing File Explorer section.
By default, the main window contains the following components:
There are a number of ways of opening File Explorer, including:
After Windows 10 has been installed, then by default, File Explorer opens at Quick access. However, you can change this default location to This PC, as described in the Initial location after opening File Explorer section.
The folders and drives on your computer, together with any networked computers and their shared folders, drives and printers, form a tree like hierarchy. This is because nearly all of these different types of location, as well as containing files, can also contain other locations which can in turn contain other locations, etc. For example, disks can contain folders, folders can contain other folders, and some special folders contain disks or networked computers.
The top level location is the Desktop folder, and this contains the following locations: OneDrive, your personal folder, This PC, Libraries, each removable drive, Network, Control Panel, and Recycle bin.
File Explorer provides several ways of changing the current location, whose contents are shown in the Items view. The following list is a brief overview; more details are given in the relevant section of the guide:
You can check the current location by pressing Insert + T to read the title bar.
If you want to know the current location, and its position in the hierarchy of locations, this can be found in the address bar in its split button mode. Tab until you get to the desktop split button, which is always the first of the split buttons. Then use Right Arrow or Left Arrow to read the split buttons.
By default, Windows hides critical files and folders, so that you don't accidentally delete them. An example of a hidden folder is the AppData folder, which is a subfolder of your personal folder, and contains various personal settings and data for Windows and for the programs which you use.
If you do want hidden files and folders to appear in the Items view and the Tree view, then on the View tab, in the Show/Hide group, there's a Hidden items check box, which is unchecked by default. Note that even if the hidden files and folders are hidden in the Items view and Tree view, you can still navigate to a hidden folder using the address bar in its edit combo box mode.
The Items view is a list of the contents of the current location which is shown in the address bar, and the list can contain folders, libraries, disks and files. Jaws calls this list the “Items view multi-select list box”, but it's referred to just as the Items view in this guide, and as the Files list in Microsoft's help.
By default, the items are sorted by name, in ascending order. For locations in which there are both folders and files, the folders are listed first, sorted by name, followed by the files, again sorted by name.
Immediately after opening File Explorer, the focus is the first item in the Items view, and it's unselected. This is also the case after changing the current location using the Tree view or the Address bar, and if necessary moving to the Items view. If you need to select the first item, then you can press Spacebar or Ctrl + Spacebar. If the current item is selected, you can deselect it by pressing Ctrl + Spacebar.
In the Items view, you can browse, navigate to different locations, and select items so that you can perform the tasks which are described in the Tasks section later in the guide. The later sub-sections of the Items view section which describe Sorting, Filtering, and Grouping, can safely be skipped when first reading this guide.
The display of each item in the Items view includes an icon, which is a small graphic. Folders, libraries and disks each have their own distinctive icon, and each file has an icon which indicates the program which opens it. This allows sighted users to quickly see whether an item is a folder or a library or a word document or whatever.
For users of screen readers, almost the same information is available from the item name's extension or lack of it. The names of nearly all files include an extension, which is a period followed by a number of characters, and this indicates the type of the file. For example, a plain text file has the extension .txt, and a Microsoft Word file has the extension .doc. In contrast, the names of folders, libraries or drives don't have extensions. By default, the file extensions are hidden, but on the View tab, in the Show/Hide group, you can check the File name extensions check box so that the extensions are shown.
Each location has a view setting, and this determines the layout of the items on the screen and the sort of information which is displayed for each item.
With the List and Contents views, which are laid out as columns, and the Details view which is a table, the keystrokes to select the next and previous item are Down Arrow and Up Arrow respectively. However, in the case of the various Icon views and the Tiles view which are laid out as rows, the keystrokes to select the next and previous item are Right Arrow and Left Arrow respectively. Because of this variation of keystrokes for the next and previous items, it greatly simplifies keyboard navigation if the views of all the locations that you go to in File Explorer are set to either List, Details or Content.
You can change the view setting of a location using either the ribbon, or keyboard shortcuts, or the item view's context menu, or the view modes radio buttons, and each of these is described below.
Changing the view setting using the ribbon:
Changing the view setting using shortcut keystrokes. For some very strange reason, these depend on the setting of Window's display language. If it is set to English (United Kingdom) they are of the form Ctrl + Alt + number (1-8). However, if the display language is set to English (United States), they are of the form Ctrl + Shift + number (1-8). In both cases the numbers for the options are:
Changing the view setting using the Item view's context menu:
Changing to the Details view, using the view modes radio buttons:
Fortunately, the default view setting of many common locations is Details. This is the case for the Documents, Music, and Downloads folders. However, the following is a list of some common locations whose view you'll probably want to change. There are a number of ways of settings these locations to be the current location, but these are all examples of locations which you can move to by typing their name into the address bar in its edit combo box mode, as described in the Edit combo box address bar section. That is, press Alt + D to move to the Address bar, type in the name of the location, and then press Enter.
This may well be all you need to know about customizing views, but more information is available in the View options of the Items view section of the Customizing section.
The details view, which was introduced in the previous section, is the default view for many locations. This view displays the item's name together with additional information such as the item's size. The information is laid out as a table in which each row describes an item. The first column is the item's name, and the subsequent columns are the item's other properties such as Date Modified and Size. These properties are often referred to as details, hence the name of the view.
There are various ways of reading an item's details:
For each location there's a set of default details which are considered to be appropriate for that location. You can change both which details are displayed, and their order by using the Choose Details dialog box. To open this dialog box:
The Choose details dialog includes:
The column headings of the table are displayed using a group of split buttons. Although they appear along the top of the table, the group of split buttons comes after the Items view as you Tab round the controls in the window. The first split button is nearly always the name split button, and once you've tabbed to this you can then use Right Arrow and Left Arrow to move between the split buttons.
The standard button part of each split button, which contains its name, can be used for sorting the items by that property, as described in the Sorting section. The menu button part of each split button can be used for filtering, and this is described in the Filtering section.
For the tasks described in the Tasks section, such as copying and deleting items, you often need to able to select one or more items in the Items view. The following sections describe how to do this.
If you need to check which items are selected, then if you press Shift + Insert + Down Arrow Jaws reads the selected items. Also, if one or more items are selected, then the number of items appears in the Status bar, which you can read by pressing Insert + Page Down.
You can select a single item using the keystrokes: Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Home, End, and the first character or characters of an item.
Press Ctrl + A.
On the Home tab, in the Select group, press the Invert selection button: all the items which were selected are deselected, and all the items which were not selected become selected.
In the Items view, you can move either down or up the location hierarchy:
By default, for nearly all locations, the Items view is sorted by name in ascending order. For locations in which there are both folders and files, the folders are listed first, sorted by name, followed by the files, again sorted by name. As described in the following two sections, you can change how the items are sorted by using either one of the Sort by menus, or the column heading in the details view.
You can control the sorting of items for a location using either the Sort by menu which is opened on the ribbon, or the Sort by menu which is opened from the item view's context menu:
Each of these Sort by menus contains two groups of options. The first is the property by which the items can be sorted, and the second consists of the options Ascending and Descending. One option in each group is checked. Unfortunately, on some versions of Windows 10, on the Sort by menu opened on the ribbon, screen readers incorrectly read all the items in the properties group as checked. To change the sorting, choose an option in one of the groups. If you change the property, then the setting of the ascending/descending options is automatically changed to the most likely setting for that property.
For example, if you wanted find the largest files in a folder, then you could choose Size on the Sort by menu. When you do this the setting of the ascending/descending options is automatically changed to descending, so that the largest file is at the top of the list of files. To restore the sorting to its normal setting, choose Name on the Sort by menu, and the setting of the ascending/descending options is automatically changed to ascending.
In fact, the properties available on the two Sort by menus are slightly different. The properties on the Sort by menu on the ribbon includes both all the properties which are present by default in the details view, and some additional properties which may be useful for grouping. The properties on the other Sort by menu are only the details shown in the details view.
If the view of the location is set to using the details view, then you can also use the split buttons which represent the column headings of the table.
The first time you change the property, then the setting of the ascending/descending options if automatically changed to the most likely setting for that property. If you want the other option for that property, then just press the standard button part of the same split button again. If you press Tab then the focus returns directly to the split button which was previously the focus.
If the view of a location is set to the Details view, then you can filter the contents of the Items view using the split buttons which represent the column headings of the table.
After you've applied a filter, the current location is a temporary location which is below the original location in the hierarchy. For example, if your Documents folder is filtered by the Type property of PDF file, then the split buttons in the address bar are something like: Desktop, This PC, Documents, PDF file. Because of this, you don't have to unset the filter to return to the original contents: you can just press either Alt + Up Arrow, or Alt + Left Arrow since it was the previous location. If you're filtered the contents using more than one property, then you just have to press these keys the appropriate number of times.
By default, only a small number of locations have the items in the Items view grouped by some property. One common example is the This PC folder, where the items are grouped by type, and typically there are two groups: Folders, and Devices and drives. In addition, if you have received the May 2019 update, then the items in the your Downloads folder are grouped by date modified.
If the Items view is grouped by some property, then it contains a number of group headings. If a group heading is expanded, which it is by default, then the items in that group appear below the heading. If it's collapsed, then the items in the groups are not shown. For both expanded and collapsed group headings, if a heading is the focus, then all the items in the group are selected.
You can control the grouping of items for a location using either the Group by menu which is opened on the ribbon, or the Group by menu which is opened from the item view's context menu:
Each of these Group by menus contains two groups of options. The first is the property by which the items can be grouped, and the second consists of the options Ascending and Descending. If one of the properties is checked, then this group also contains the option (none) so that grouping can be turned off. Unfortunately, on some versions of Windows 10, on the Group by menu opened from the ribbon, screen readers incorrectly read all the items in the properties group as checked. To group the items by a property, choose one of the properties from this menu. When you do this, the setting of the ascending/descending options is automatically changed to the most likely setting for that property, and the options on the Sort by menu are set to the same settings as the Group by menu, which is normally what you want.
In fact, the properties available on the two Group by menus are slightly different. The properties on the Group by menu on the ribbon includes both all the properties which are present by default in the details view, and some additional properties which may be useful for grouping. The properties on the other Group by menu are only the details shown in the details view.
When Jaws reads a group heading, which it refers to as a row header, it reads the name of the group, whether it's expanded or collapsed, and the number of items in the group in parenthesis.
To expand or collapse group headings:
Unfortunately there aren't any shortcuts to move to the next or previous group heading. However, you can collapse all the group headings as described above, read through the headings, and then expand the headings which you're interested in.
The Address bar both shows the current location, and enables you to change it. It has two different modes: it's either a series of split buttons, or an edit combo box, and these will be described in detail in the following two sections below. When you move to the Address bar, its initial mode depends on the keystroke used to move to it:
Once you're in the address bar, then you can easily switch between the two modes:
When the Address bar is in split button mode, it consists of one or more split buttons, and you can move between these using Left Arrow and Right Arrow. These split buttons show the current location, together with its place in the location hierarchy. For example, if the current location is your Documents folder, then the split buttons are: Desktop, This PC, and Documents. You can read this as Desktop contains This PC, which contains Documents. The initial focus is the first split button, and because the Desktop folder is the top location in the hierarchy, this is always the Desktop split button.
Note that if the current location doesn't contain any locations, then the last button is an ordinary button rather than a split button. Also, if there isn't enough space in the address bar for all the split buttons, then one or more of the split buttons between the Desktop split button and the current location split button are omitted.
To change the current location using the split buttons:
The edit combo box shows the current location, and its position in a location hierarchy using backslashes to separate its parts. You can move to a new location by typing the appropriate text, as described in the next section.
Note that the location hierarchy shown in edit combo box mode is different from the one shown in the split buttons mode, and which is described in the Hierarchy of locations section above. For standard file folders it reflects the arrangement of the folders on your disk drives. For example, for the Downloads folder which is in your personal folder, the address will be something like C:\Users\Username\Downloads.
You can change the current location by typing in the appropriate text, as described below, and then pressing Enter. The focus then normally moves to the Items view.
You can move to a number of folders simply by typing in the name of the folder. These include:
To move to a particular drive you can type in its drive letter, followed by colon. For example, if you know that the drive letter of your USB memory stick is E, then you can just type in E:.
If the location you type in doesn't match an actual location, then either an Address bar message box opens which tells you to check the spelling, or it's assumed to be a web address, and your default web browser opens.
Additional notes
The Tree view contains both a tree view of the hierarchy of locations and Quick access. Note that this Tree view is called the Navigation pane in Microsoft's documentation, and in various places in the user interface. However, since Jaws reads the control as “tree view tree view”, this guide refers to it simply as the Tree view.
By default, some locations are omitted from the hierarchy of locations shown in the Tree view, and the tree view contains the following items:
By default the top level Desktop folder, your personal folder, the Libraries folder, Control panel, and the Recycle bin are omitted from the tree view. If you want these folders to be shown, there are options both to show all the folders, and to show the Libraries, and setting these is described in the Tree view options section of the Customizing section.
To change the current location using this tree view, select a location, and then press Enter. Note that the focus remains in the Tree view, so you then have to press Tab if you want to move to the Items view.
With Quick access and This PC items expanded, which they are by default, it's very easy to select common locations such as your Downloads folder or a USB memory stick using the first character or characters of the item. Note that if you signed in with a Microsoft account, then both the OneDrive folder and the This PC folder contain a Documents folder. So if you press the letter D until you get to Documents, you may be unsure which Documents folder you've selected. To get round this, first select the folder containing the Documents folder you want, for example This PC, and then select the Documents folder. Similarly both the OneDrive folder and the This PC folder contain a Pictures folder.
This is a brief summary of all the standard keystrokes for selecting a location:
A more detailed description of the tree view control is given in the separate Controls Guide. Note that one of the examples given in that guide is the folder hierarchy in Windows XP, and not Windows 8.
When you move to the Tree view, the initial focus is the location which is selected. When you're not in the Tree view and change the current location, then which location is selected in the Tree view is automatically updated to reflect this. However, exactly which location ends up being selected depends on the setting of the expand to current folder option. When the current location is changed, then:
Instructions for setting this option are given in the Tree view options section of the Customizing section.
Note that you can also manually select the current location in the Tree view by pressing Ctrl + Shift + E, which if necessary expands the tree view so that the current location is shown, and then selects this location.
The Quick access item at the top of the Tree view contains pinned and frequently used locations, and recently used files. By default, the locations which are pinned are Desktop, Downloads, Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos. You can also add to and remove these pinned locations, as described in the following sections. Adding a pinned location can be particularly useful for quickly moving to locations which are deep down in the location hierarchy.
In the Tree view, the locations contained by the Quick access item are ordered so that the pinned locations are listed before the frequently used locations. In addition, for screen readers, the word pinned is appended in parenthesis to the name of the pinned locations.
If the Quick access item is set as the current location, then the Items view contains contains two groups: frequent folders, which in fact contains both pinned and frequently used locations; and recently used files.
If you don't want frequently used locations or recently used files to be included in Quick access, then there are options to do this, as described in the Quick access options section, which is in the Customizing File Explorer section.
The following sections describe how to add to and manage the pinned locations.
To add a location to the pinned locations in Quick access, select the location in either the Tree view or the Items view, and choose Pin to Quick access on its context menu.
In the tree view, select a pinned location contained by the Quick access item, open its context menu, and choose Unpin from Quick access.
To sort the locations by name, select the Quick access item, and choose Sort by name from its context menu.
This section describes a number of common tasks which involve folders and files, and in the text that follows, an item can be either a folder or a file. Normally, you'll select items in the Items view, which was described in the Selecting items section above. However, if you only need to select a single folder, then you can also do this in the Tree view.
The tasks included in this section are opening files, creating new folders, deleting, renaming, copying, and moving items, and finding out the sizes of files, folders, libraries, and disks.
To open a file, select it and then press Enter. The file will be opened by the default program for the type of that file, which is indicated by its extension.
You can open a number of files at the same time, as long as they share the same default program. One useful example is that you can select a number of music files, and then press Enter. All the files are then played by your default music player.
When you delete items, they're moved to the Recycle bin, which gives you a chance to retrieve them if in future you realize that you need them. Exceptions to this are that if you delete items from devices with removable storage like CDs or USB flash drives, or from the Recycle bin, they are permanently deleted.
To delete one or more items:
By default, if you delete an item or items, and they're going to be moved to the Recycle bin, then the items are silently deleted – there's no confirmation dialog.
If you want a confirmation dialog:
Note that this option can also be set in the properties dialog of the recycle bin, which can be opened from the recycle bin's context menu.
One way of moving to the Recycle bin is to press Alt + D to move to the Address bar, type recycle bin, and then press Enter. Alternatively, you can easily move there using either the Tree view or the Items view.
If the view has been set to the Details view, then by default the second column heading of the Items view of the Recycle bin is the original location of the deleted item. You can restore one or more items to their original locations by selecting them and then choosing Restore from their context menu. Alternatively, you can either copy and paste or cut and paste them to wherever you want.
To rename an item:
When you create a new folder, it's created in the current location.
For example, if there are two folders in your Documents folder, and you wanted to copy a file from one folder to the other folder, you could:
As a second example, which illustrates the various ways of specifying the destination folder, say that you wanted to copy a file from your Documents folder to a folder on a USB memory stick. After selecting the file and pressing Ctrl + C you could do any of the following:
This involves exactly the same steps as Copy and Paste, which was described in the last section, but in the second step, rather than copy, either go to the Home tab, and in the Clipboard group press the Cut button, or open the context menu and choose Cut, or press the shortcut Ctrl + X.
For example, if you wanted to move a file in your Documents folder to a Folder in your Documents folder:
The Sent To sub menu provides a convenient way of copying one or more items to a number of locations and programs.
By default, the Send To sub menu contains the following destinations:
Note that if you open the context menu with Shift + Application Key or Shift + F10, the Send To sub menu also contains the folders in your personal folder, for example Music, and Videos.
You can add locations to the Send To sub menu, by creating shortcuts to them in a SendTo folder, which is buried deep in the folder hierarchy beneath your personal folder. This is one way of creating a shortcut to a location in your SendTo folder:
The size of a single file may be available as one the properties shown in a details view. In addition, the size of one or more selected files is shown in their properties dialog.
A number of locations have by default both a Details view, and the item's size as the fourth column. Examples of these locations are the Documents folder, the Downloads folder, and disks. Although, by default, the Music folder has a Details view, size is not one of the properties shown. If you need to check the size of music files frequently, you can add size to the properties shown, and then change the order of the properties so that the size is the fourth column, just like these other locations. See the Changing the details section of the Details view section for instructions.
You can also find the size of a selected file or the total size of a number of selected files in their Properties dialog:
The size of a selected folder, or the total size of a number selected folders is shown in their properties dialog:
As in the case of folders described above, the size of a library is available in its properties dialog, and again you can't read it by using standard keyboard navigation. In this case the initial focus in the dialog box is near the top of the page, so after routing the Jaws cursor to the PC cursor, read down the page using Down Arrow.
The easiest way to find a disk's size and amount of free space is to set the This PC folder as the current location. If the view has be set to Details, as has already been suggested, then the third and fourth columns are the disk's total size and free space respectively.
Alternatively, the size, free space and used space are available in a disk's properties dialog. As in the case of folders and libraries described above, you can't read this information by standard keyboard navigation, but have to either read the whole page or use the Jaws cursor.
To search the current location using the search box:
By default, when the Items view contains search results, its view is set to the Contents view. Each result consists of the item's name, together with some other information, including the folder path. This specifies the folder which contains the item, using the same disk and folder hierarchy which is used in the Address bar in edit combo box mode. When using Down Arrow or Up Arrow to select the next or previous item, then Jaws reads only the item's name. However, if you press Insert + Up Arrow to read the current item, then Jaws reads all the information. You may prefer to change the view to the Details view which makes it easier to access each item's properties, such as its folder path.
After you have typed in your search terms and pressed Enter, the Search Tools seach tab is displayed on the ribbon, and automatically becomes the active tab. On this tab, the Refine group contains controls for applying advanced search terms. However, it's normally easier just to type in these options, as described later in this section.
As you type your search terms into the search box, a drop down list of search suggestions and selected search results appears below the search box. You may or may not find the items on this list useful.
The next three sections describe the locations searched, which information is searched, and details of the word matching. The sections after these describe more advanced techniques which allow you to refine your searches.
The current location is searched, and by default all the the locations below this in the location hierarchy are also searched. So for example, if you search your Documents folder, then all its folders are searched, and any sub-folders of these folders etc. If the current location is a folder or a drive, then there is an option to search only the current location: on the Search tools Search tab, in the Location group, press the Current Folder button. Note that this setting is only temporary, and the default behaviour returns as soon as the Search edit box becomes empty.
An alternative way of restricting the search to just the current folder is to add a search term which specifies the folder to be searched. For example, if the current folder is documents, then to search for fred only in that folder, and not in any sub folders, you could use the search terms fred in:documents.
When you search, the information which is matched against your search terms depends both on whether the location is indexed, and on certain search options. By default:
Windows maintains an Index which contains information about the files and their contents in certain locations, and this information is stored in a way that enables searches to be very fast. So when you search for files in one of these indexed locations, the index is searched rather than the location itself, and so even a search which includes file contents will be fast. By default, these are the locations which are indexed:
For many people, the default settings for searching are fine. However, there are two main changes you can make:
See the Search options section for details.
You can use either complete words or the beginnings of words as search terms. So, for example, the search term cat would match both cat and catch.
Note that for the purposes of searching, the following characters separate words: space, period, -, @, _, and \. So the search term mp3 would match files with the filenames: mp3 patents.doc, patents-for-mp3.doc, and cooleddie.mp3
You can use wildcard characters in the search, which match against any character or characters:
As described above, each search term is normally matched against either file names alone, or file names, other properties and file contents, depending on whether the location is indexed, and the search options. However you can also search for files which have a specific property which matches a search term using the format property:search term. You can do this in any location, regardless of whether it's indexed, and of the search options. If the location isn't indexed, then the search just takes longer.
For example, name:bert, would match files whose name matched fred, and author:david would match files whose author matched david. You can use any of the properties which are listed in the Choose Details dialog box, which is opened from the View tab, as described in the Changing the details section. They don't have to be checked in the dialog, and you don't have to be using the Details view.
There are abbreviations for a number of commonly used properties, including:
If the property consists of more than one word, then all the examples given by Microsoft show that you should omit the spaces between the words when searching using this property. So for example, if you're looking for contacts whose first name is susan, then you'd type firstname:susan. However, in practice it seems to work both without and with the spaces.
If you're using more than one search term for the value of a property, then the following examples show the need to use either parenthesis or quotes. Assuming that you're searching a location where normally both filenames and file contents are searched then:
You can search for just the text in files using the property content (or contents). For example, content:fish matches files which contain the word fish. Whether or not the name of a file, or any of its other properties contains the word fish has no effect on the files found. As with any property, you can use this in any location, although the search takes longer if the location is not indexed.
To specify ranges of dates or sizes, you can use the following operators: <, >, <=, >=, and .. . For example:
You can use the following values for specifying dates:
Anther way of refining a search is to specify the kind of file you're looking for. As in the case of using properties, you can do this in any location, regardless of whether it's indexed, and of your search options.
Note that if the kind of file ends in the letter s, than this can be omitted: kind:docs and kind:doc both match files which contain text.
So, for example:
OneDrive is the name of Microsoft's online storage, and using this, you can store up to 5GB for no charge. OneDrive is integrated into File Explorer: in the location hierarchy, there's a OneDrive folder both at the same level as the This PC folder, and in your personal folder, as described in the Hierarchy of locations section.
If you've signed into Windows 10 with a local account, rather than a Microsoft account, then to use OneDrive, you either have to change your account to a Microsoft account, or sign into OneDrive using a Microsoft Account. To do the latter, if you open the OneDrive folder, then a dialog opens which enables you to sign in.
The main advantages of storing files online are that you can easily access them from other computers, and that you can share files which would be too big to send as an email attachment. If you want to use online storage, then there are also several alternatives to OneDrive, including Dropbox and Google Drive.
As well as having online copies of files, you can also have local copies on a computer. This allows you to access the files when you don't have an internet connection. If you have a large amount of data stored on OneDrive, you may only want to have local copies of some of your folders or files on OneDrive on a particular computer. You have a choice of two schemes for managing which files have local copies. You can choose to use the Files On-Demand scheme, or the scheme which is available when Files On-Demand is turned off. These two schemes are described in the next two sections.
To set whether or not to use Files On-Demand:
If you're using Files On-Demand, then all the folders and files on your OneDrive, including those which are available only when online, are listed in File Explorer. However, if you want to hide certain folders, you can do this, as described in the next section. In File Explorer, each of your files and Folders in OneDrive have one of the following statuses:
And these are the ways in which the availability of a file or folder can change:
In the items view of File Explorer, there are a couple of ways of finding out the status of a folder or file. If the view is set to the details view, then the second column is the status, and so you can read this by pressing Right Arrow. If the view is set to either the list or details view, then if you press Insert + Up Arrow to read the current line, this includes the status.
On a particular computer, you may want to hide the contents of one or more folders, so that they are not listed in in File Explorer.
If you're not using Files On-Demand, then you can choose which folders and files are available on the device. However, in contrast to using Files On-Demand, those folders and files which are set to being not available on the device are not listed in File Explorer.
To choose which folders and files have local copies which are kept in sync with their online copies:
You can easily share a link to a file or the contents of a folder which is in your OneDrive. If you select a file or folder, open its context menu and choose share, then a dialog opens which has the title share, followed by the name of the file or folder. The dialog includes the following controls, which provide a number of ways of sharing a link:
As stated above, the link's default permission allows anyone with the link to change the contents of the file or folder on your OneDrive. This may be what you want, but if it isn't then this is how to change the permission:
Other settings for OneDrive are available in the Microsoft OneDrive dialog, which has already been referred to. There are, in fact, a couple of ways of opening this dialog. The first is to open the context menu of the OneDrive icon in the notification area, and choose settings. The second is to select the OneDrive folder in either the tree view or items view of File Explorer, and again choose settings from its context menu.
A library is a combined view of one or more folders which are included in a library. For example, if you have music files on both your computer's hard disk and an external hard disk, you can use the Music library to create a combined view of all your music files. By default there are four libraries: Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos.
These are some important properties of libraries:
Default libraries
By default there are four libraries: Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos. By default, the folders which these libraries include are as follows:
The default save location of each of the libraries is the corresponding folder in your Personal folder.
The next few sections describe tasks such as including additional folders in libraries, and changing the default save location of a library. Many of these tasks involve using the Library Locations dialog, and so this dialog is described in this section, before going on to describe these tasks in the following sections.
To open the Library Locations dialog for a library:
The dialog contains:
In the library's Library Locations dialog:
Note that after including a folder in a new empty library or one of the default libraries, the library is automatically set to be grouped by the included folders in the library. To switch this grouping off, go the View tab, and in the Current view group, press the Group by menu button and choose None. Once the grouping has been turned off for a particular library, it doesn't automatically turn on again.
An alternative way of including a folder is in the File Explorer window:
In the library's Library Locations dialog:
In the library's Library Locations dialog:
Because a library is a combined view of one or more folders, when you're in a library, you may not know where a particular file or folder is actually stored. To find out where it's stored:
A zip file contains files which have been compressed to reduce their size, and it has the extension .zip. It can also contain the folder hierarchy associated with the files. For example, you could create a zip file which contained a folder, and all the folders and files beneath this folder in the folder hierarchy. The main uses of zip files are for sending files by email, downloading files from the web, and archiving.
Although a zip file really is a file, Windows also treats it as a folder, and refers to it as a Compressed (zipped) folder. This allows you to view and manage the contents of a zip file as if it were a folder:
The following sections describe the wizard for extracting all the items from a zip file, and two ways of creating one.
To extract all the items from a zip file, you can just select all the items, and then use copy and paste. Alternatively, you can use the Extract Compressed folders wizard:
A ribbon is an alternative to having a menu bar and one or more toolbars. It includes a collection of controls which have been grouped into one or more tabs, which is similar to the grouping of controls in dialog boxes which have more than one page/tab.
The ribbon is made up of the following parts:
The Quick Access Toolbar is a short toolbar, and takes up a small part of the left hand end of the title bar. The upper and lower ribbons run across the entire width of the window, with the lower ribbon, which contains the controls of the active tab, taking up the most amount of screen space.
In File Explorer, the Home, Share, and View tabs are nearly always displayed. However, when the current location is either This PC or Network, the Home and Share tabs are absent. In addition to these tabs, some tabs are only displayed when a particular type of object is selected, and these are known as contextual tabs. For example, when the current location is a library, the Library tools manage tab is displayed, and when the search box is the focus, the Search tools search tab is displayed.
You have the choice as to whether to use the standard windows keystrokes for using the ribbon, or the Jaws virtual ribbon. The standard keystrokes are described in the next section, and the Using the Jaws virtual ribbon section below describes the alternative.
Note that in File Explorer, by default the ribbon is minimized, and in this state the controls of the active tab (the lower ribbon) are not shown by default. When the ribbon is minimized, then the windows keystrokes for using the ribbon are slightly different, and the Jaws virtual ribbon doesn't work properly. The rest of this section on the ribbon assumes that the ribbon is not minimized. To switch the minimization off:
There is also a shortcut Ctrl + F1, which toggles whether or not a ribbon is minimized.
You can use the following keystrokes to move around the ribbon:
Note that unlike in dialog boxes, you can't switch between the tabs by pressing Ctrl + Tab.
Note also, that when you move away from the tabs to either other controls on the upper ribbon, or the Quick Access Toolbar, Jaws says that you're leaving the ribbon. You've leaving the ribbon tabs, but you're not in fact leaving the ribbon.
The next three sections give examples of using these keystrokes for: navigating the tabs, opening the File menu, and navigating the Quick Access Toolbar. There is then a section on using the access keys of the controls in the ribbon.
It's possible to move around the controls in a tab using the arrow keys, but this isn't recommended: the problem is that the layout of the controls in a group of controls on a tab can vary: sometimes the controls are in a single row, sometimes, some of the controls are grouped into more than one row, and sometimes some of the controls are grouped into a column or say 2 or 3 controls. So if use Right Arrow or Left Arrow to move through the controls, where there's more than one row, you'll only move through the controls in one of the rows, and similarly in the case of a column, you only move to one of the controls in the column. This isn't a problem for sighted users, as they can see that in these cases they have to use the Up Arrow and/or Down Arrow keys as well to be able to move to all the controls. There is also an additional problem that you can get stuck in in edit boxes and accidentally change the settings of combo boxes.
To open the File menu: press Alt to move to the name of the active tab; then press either Left Arrow or Shift + Tab one or more times to move to the File tab button, and press it.
These are a number ways of moving the to the buttons on the Quick access toolbar:
One difference between the access keys used on a ribbon, and the access keys used in menus and dialog boxes, is that on a ribbon an access key can consist of either one or two characters. Some of the controls on the tabs have access keys with two characters, and the access keys of all the names of contextual tabs consist of two characters, with the first character always being the letter J.
When you press Alt to move to the name of the active tab on the ribbon, then this keystroke also makes the access keys of all the items in the Quick Access Toolbar, and the upper ribbon available. Note that at this point, the access keys of the controls on the active tab are not available, even though they are visible. So, after pressing the Alt key:
Note that unfortunately, Jaws does not read out the access keys of either the File tab button or the tab names, or the buttons on the Quick Access toolbar. The access keys of the Home, Share and View tabs are H, S and V respectively. In addition Jaws only occasionally reads the access keys of the controls on the tabs. When it does so, it reads the complete series of keystrokes to activate the control, that is Alt followed by the access key of the tab name, followed by the access key of the control.
Additional notes:
The Jaws virtual ribbon provides an alternative set of keystrokes for using the ribbon. The setting for whether to use the Jaws virtual ribbon, or the standard windows keystrokes is described in the Setting the Jaws virtual ribbon section. By default, the Jaws virtual ribbon is off.
The main features of the Jaws virtual ribbon are:
Using the Jaws virtual ribbon, these are the keystrokes for moving around the ribbon:
The next three sections give examples of using these keystrokes for: navigating the tabs, opening the File menu, and navigating the Quick Access Toolbar. There are then sections on using the access keys of the controls in the ribbon, and on first character navigation.
After pressing Alt to move to the ribbon, the focus is either the active tab name or one of the controls of the active tab. From there you can move to any of the controls of any of the tabs by using the standard keystrokes for moving around menu bars and their associated menus.
For edit boxes and combo boxes, some of the keystrokes or interacting with them are also used for navigating the menus. For example, Down Arrow is used both for moving to the next menu item, and selecting the next option of a combo box. A similar problem occurs when interacting with these controls on web pages, and Jaws uses the same solution. To interact with edit boxes or combo boxes on the tab menus, you first have to press Enter to go into forms mode. Then Jaws knows that your keystrokes are intended to the control, and not to move around the menus.
To open the File menu:
To move to the buttons on the Quick Access toolbar:
When using the virtual ribbon, only the access keys of the controls of the upper ribbon and the Quick Access Toolbar are available, and to use them you have to press the Alt key together with the access key, you can't press the Alt key, and then the access key.
You can use the first character of items to navigate both the names of the tabs, and the menus. When you press a character key:
The Quick access toolbar contains buttons for frequently used commands. The default buttons are properties, and new folder. Since these both have standard keyboard shortcuts, they're not particularly useful for users of screen readers. So if you use this toolbar regularly, you may find it helpful to remove these default buttons, and then add the ones that you want.
Note that you can also add and remove a small number of commands using the Customize Quick Access Toolbar menu, but this isn't particularly useful. The menu contains a small number of options for commands, including the default commands. The commands which are checked appear on the Quick Access Toolbar.
This section contains a number of useful customizations of File Explorer. Some of these have already been described in the guide, but are repeated here for convenience.
Many of the settings for File Explorer can be found in the File Options dialog. To open this dialog from within File Explorer: Open the File menu (Alt+F), and choose the menu item whose name can be either Options or Change folder and search options.
You can also open this dialog from the Control panel, where it is referred to as File Explorer options.
Some of these settings can also be found on the ribbon, and in many cases, it's easier to find them there. In a number of the following sections, although changing a setting using the ribbon will be described, it's also possible to change the setting using this dialog if you prefer.
By default, File Explorer opens at Quick access, but you can change this to This PC, which includes all your drives, and common folders. Quick access does have the advantage that you can customise it to include exactly the locations which you want, but many may find using This PC more convenient.
To change the initial location:
In File Explorer, the ribbon is minimized by default. When this is the case, the standard windows keystrokes for using the ribbon are slightly different, and the Jaws virtual ribbon doesn't work properly. To switch the minimization off:
To show file extensions in the Items view, go to the View tab, and in the Show/Hide group, check the File name extensions check box.
On the View tab, in the Show/Hide group, there's a Hidden items check box, which is unchecked by default. Check this to show hidden files and folders.
The options for the tree view include the following, which are disabled by default, and were described in the Tree view section:
To set these options:
By default, Quick access contains both frequently used folders and recently used files. If you don't want one or both of these to be shown, then:
By default, if you delete an item or items, and they're going to be moved to the Recycle bin, then the items are silently deleted – there's no confirmation dialog.
If you want a confirmation dialog:
Note that this option can also be set in the properties dialog of the recycle bin, which can be opened from the recycle bin's context menu.
You can change both which locations are indexed, and the search behaviour in locations which are not indexed, and these are described in the following two sections.
The settings described in this section assume that the version of Windows 10 which you are using is 1903 (May 2019 update) or later.
The settings for controlling which locations are indexed can be found in the Settings app. In the main Search category, there is a Searching Windows category. Note that some of the settings in this category are only displayed if you are using an administrator account, and not a standard account. You can get to these settings either by searching or navigating the Settings app. Alternatively, you can:
In the Find My Files section there is a group of two radio buttons for settings which locations are indexed:
Also in the Searching windows category, there is an Advanced Search Indexer link, which opens an Indexing Options dialog. However, the use of this more advanced set of options is not covered in this guide.
In locations which aren't indexed, you can change the behaviour to search for the names, properties and contents of files, rather than just the names. This however can make searching very slow.
In this section, the term view options will be used for the following group of options of a location in the Items view: its view, the details present in the details view, sorting, and grouping. How to set these options is described above in the Views, Details view, Sorting, and Grouping section of the Items view section. In addition, some of the common customizations are described in the Views section, and this may well be all the information you need. This section provides further details about setting view options which will enable you to fully customize your view settings.
Issues such as the default view options, whether changing the view options of a location automatically changes the view options of other locations, and whether you can manually apply the view options of a location to other locations, all depend on the type of the location. These types are:
For Libraries, and folders, the default view options are determined by what kind of files they're optimized for, and this will be described in the next section, which is then followed by sections for the different types of location.
All libraries and folders have a setting for optimizing them for the kind of files which are expected to be in that location, and the options are General Items, Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos. This setting determines the library's or folder's default view, and the default details present in the Details view.
For a folder, the setting of its optimization for the kind of files it contains is found on the Customize page of the folder's properties dialog. This dialog can be opened by selecting a folder in either the Tree view or the Items view, and choosing Properties from its context menu.
The first control on the Customize page is an “Optimize the folder for: ” combo box. Note that if you change the setting, the following control is a check box for applying the setting to all the subfolders.
By default, these are the optimizations for some common folders: Downloads is optimized for General items, Documents for documents, Music for music, Pictures for pictures, and Videos for videos.
When you change the view options of a folder, this does not affect the view settings of any other folder. However, you can manually apply all the views options of a folder, that is, its view, details, sorting and grouping, to all the other folders which are optimized for the same kinds of files:
Note that this also determines the view options of new folders of that type.
The Desktop folder at the top of the location hierarchy, and the folders which it contains, for example Libraries and This PC, are all special folders. Although not set to have a Details view by default, in many cases the details present in the details view are particular to that folder. For example, the details for the This PC folder include total size and free space. Because of this, these folders don't have a setting for optimizing them for the standard kinds of files.
By default, your personal folder has a Medium icons view, and the following have a Tiles view: Desktop, OneDrive (if present), This PC, Libraries, Network, and Recycle Bin. It's recommended that for these locations the view is changed to Details, or possibly List in the case of the Libraries folder.
There are a few of important points to understand about the behaviour of the view options of libraries.
As you might have guessed, by default the Document library is optimized for documents, the Music library for music, the Pictures library for pictures, and the Video library for videos. The default view options for the various kinds of files were given in the previous section.
For a library, the setting of its optimization for kinds of files is found in the library's properties dialog. This dialog can be opened by selecting a library in either the Tree view of the Items view, and choosing Properties from its context menu. In the dialog, there's a “Optimize the library for:” combo box.
In general, the view options of disks and devices behave in the same way as folders, and by default they are optimized for General Items. One exception to this is the disk which contains Windows 10, and this doesn't have a optimization for kinds of files setting.
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| Open File Explorer at its default location | Windows key + E |
| Cycle around: Address bar in split button mode, Search box, Tree view, Items view, and if this has a Details view, a Name split button, which is the first of the column headings, view mode radio buttons. | Tab, or Shift + Tab |
| Move to Items view | Ctrl + Tab, twice |
| Move to Search box | Ctrl + E or Ctrl + F or F3 |
| In the Items view, move up a location | Alt + Up Arrow |
| List view | Ctrl + Shift + 5 or Ctrl + Alt + 5, depending on language |
| Details view | Ctrl + Shift + 6 or Ctrl + Alt + 6, depending on language |
| Back to previous location | Alt + Left Arrow |
| Forward | Alt + Right Arrow |
| Create a new folder | Ctrl + Shift + N |
| Move to Address bar in edit combo box mode | Alt + D |
| In the address bar, switch to split buttons mode | Esc |
| In the address bar, switch to edit combo box mode | Alt + D, or with focus on desktop split button, Spacebar |
| If necessary, expand the tree view so that the current location is shown, and then select this folder. | Ctrl + Shift + E |
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| Move to the ribbon | Alt |
| Leave the ribbon | Alt or Esc |
| Cycle forwards or backwards round: File tab button, tab names, minimise the ribbon button, and the help button | Right Arrow or Left Arrow respectively |
| Cycle forwards or backwards round: File tab button, Quick Access Toolbar buttons, active tab name, minimize the ribbon button, help button, the controls on the active tab | Tab or Shift + Tab respectively |
| Cycle forwards or backwards round: File tab button, first Quick Access Toolbar button, customize Quick Access Toolbar button, active tab name, and the first control in each group on the active tab | Ctrl + Right Arrow or Ctrl + Left Arrow respectively |
| Cycle forwards or backwards round the Quick Access Toolbar buttons | Right Arrow or Left Arrow respectively |
| Move to Quick Access Toolbar from the first tab name | Up Arrow |
| Open the File menu | Alt + F, or Alt, F |
| Quick Access Toolbar button | Alt + number, or Alt, number |
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| Move to the ribbon | Alt |
| Leave the ribbon | Alt or Esc |
| Cycle forwards or backwards round: File tab button, tab names, minimize the ribbon button, and help button | Right Arrow or Left Arrow respectively |
| Open a tab menu | Down Arrow or Enter |
| Move to Quick Access Toolbar from the first tab name | Up Arrow |
| Cycle forwards or backwards round the Quick Access Toolbar buttons | Right Arrow or Left Arrow respectively |
| Open the File menu | Alt + F |
| Quick Access Toolbar button | Alt + number |