ACCESSING COMMANDS AND MENUS

In Windows Explorer under Vista, a blue bar appears across the top, providing Organize and Views buttons. Each of these buttons opens a menu. (Other buttons are on this bar as well, but they vary depending on the location you're viewing.)

The Organize menu, shown in Figure 2-13, contains commands for common file operations. From here you can cut, copy, paste, delete, undo and redo, rename, and create new folders.

Figure 2-13: Use the Organize menu for common file operations.
Figure 2-13: Use the Organize menu for common file operations.

The View menu, shown in Figure 2-14, offers options for adjusting the icon sizes and positions. Drag the slider up and down to set an icon size, or click directly on one of the sizes. (The purpose of the slider is to enable you to select a size that is midway between two sizes.) The larger sizes of icons make it possible to see previews of the file's content (for supported file formats only, such as graphics and word processing documents).

Figure 2-14: Use the View menu to adjust icon size.
Figure 2-14: Use the View menu to adjust icon size.

If you were accustomed to managing files in earlier versions of Windows Explorer, you might wish that you had the old-style menu system back. Well, it's still there -- it's just hidden by default. In fact, some of the new Vista-specific commands are available only from this menu system (such as stacking, which you'll learn about in the next section).

Press the Alt key to make the menu bar appear, as shown in Figure 2-15.

Figure 2-15: An old-style menu bar is available by pressing Alt.
Figure 2-15: An old-style menu bar is available by pressing Alt.

If you want the old-style menu bar to always be available, you can set the window up for that. Just select Organize > Layout > Menu Bar.

Next, learn about stacking, sorting, and grouping files.