Selecting Files with Check Boxes
All of these are fairly
sophisticated and useful technologies. However, sometimes it’s the
small, mundane elements that make your life with an operating system
easier and more efficient. In this section, you learn about one of our
favorites of Windows 8’s many small but quite useful tweaks: a
technique that affects the way you select files.
When you need
to select multiple, noncontiguous objects, the easiest method is to
hold down the Ctrl key and click each item you want to select. However,
when we use this technique to select more than a few files, we always
end up accidentally selecting one or more files that we don’t want.
It’s not a big deal to deselect these extra files, but it’s one of
those small drains on productivity that bugs us (and many other users).
Windows 8 offers a file-selection technique
that promises to eliminate accidental selections. With this technique,
you use a check box to select individual files and folders. To activate
this feature, display File Explorer’s View tab and then activate the
Item Check Boxes check box.
As you can see in Figure 1,
when you turn on this feature, Explorer creates a column to the left of
the folder contents in Details view. When you point at a file or
folder, a check box appears in this column, and you select an item by
activating its check box. You don’t need to hold down Ctrl or use the
keyboard at all. Just activate the check boxes for the files and
folders you want to select.
Figure 1. In Windows 8, you can select files and folders using check boxes.
Tip
Bonus technique: You can also select all the
items in the folder quickly by clicking the check box that appears at
the top of the Name column.
Understanding Size on Disk
Resolving File Transfer Conflicts
When you move or copy a file into the
destination folder, it sometimes happens that a file with the same name
already resides in that folder. In earlier versions of Windows, you’d
see a dialog box asking whether you want to replace the existing file,
and you’d click Yes or No, as appropriate. Unfortunately, Windows
didn’t give you much information to go on to help you make the choice.
Windows 8 takes a step in the right direction by displaying the Replace
or Skip Files dialog box instead. Figure 2 shows an example.
Figure 2. This dialog box appears if a file with the same name already exists inside the destination folder.
This dialog box gives you the following choices:
• Replace the File in the Destination—Click this option if you want the file you are copying (or moving) to replace the existing file.
• Skip This File—Click this option if you want Windows 8 to not copy (or move) the file, so the original remains in the destination folder.
• Compare Info for Both Files—Click
this option to see more information about both files, including a
thumbnail, the last modified date, and the size. Activate the check box
for the version you want to keep and then click Continue. Note, too,
that you can keep both files by activating both check boxes
and then clicking Continue. In this case, the existing file remains as
is, and the file being copied or moved is placed in the folder with (2) appended to the filename.
