Open any Windows application and take a look at its Open and Save As dialog boxes. Notice how they look pretty much like the dialog boxes in any other application? That’s because Microsoft provides programmers with a set of common dialog boxes. Any programmer may  use these pre-designed dialog boxes to provide standard file management for their application. In fact, Microsoft encourages programmers to use the common dialogs in order to give Windows users a more consistent experience from one app to another.

You may have observed that in Windows 7, that single dialog box approach seems to have been derailed. That’s because some applications still use the old Windows XP dialog boxes instead of the revamped Windows 7 version. The most obvious difference between the two styles of dialog box is that XP’s rather restrictive Places bar is replaced by a more extensive navigation pane in the newer dialogs.

One of the features which has remained consistent – but not obvious – from XP to Windows 7, is the availability of right-click options within the file dialog boxes.

Right-click shortcuts

Give it a try:

1. Open an application and then press Ctrl-O, or click the Open icon, to display the Open dialog box.
2. Right-click any of the files or folders displayed in that dialog and you’ll see a context menu pop open. This is the same context menu you’ll find in Explorer windows.

From that context menu, you can perform all sorts of file tasks, from renaming or deleting a file to scanning it with your anti-virus software.

So while you normally use the Open or Save As dialogs simply to open or save a file, you can, in fact, achieve a whole lot more through them.

This is useful for a variety of tasks:

• Deleting unwanted files;
• Quickly performing a task you’d otherwise perform later, such as converting a document to a PDF;
• Scanning a file for viruses;
• Playing an MP3 music file (or, if you have WinAmp installed, you can queue a whole folder full of audio files to play);
• Adding a folder to a Windows Library;
• Performing a variety of on-the-fly actions when you notice something which needs changing, such as a filename.

The exact options you have available will depend on the software installed on your computer. For instance, you won’t be able to do PDF conversions unless you have Acrobat or another PDF program installed.

Limitations and extensions

There are some limitations on what you can do via the dialog boxes, too. For example, if you’re working on a document in Microsoft Word and you open the ‘Save As’ dialog box, you won’t be able to right-click another Word document and select Open to open it for editing as well. That’s because the dialog box you’re using has focus, meaning you have to close it before you can do anything else within Word.

There’s nothing stopping you from opening a document within another program, however. For example, you can open an Excel spreadsheet from within Word’s ‘Save As’ dialog box.

1. Press F12 in Word to open the ‘Save As’ dialog box.
2. You’ll note that the only files displayed are those you can edit in Word, such as .docx, .doc, .pdf, .txt and so on. To display Excel files, type *.xls or *.xlsx in the ‘File Name’ box and press Enter. (If you prefer to display all files, type *.* in the ‘File Name’ box and press Enter.)
3. Right-click an .xls file and select Open from the context menu to open it in Excel. While you’re editing the Excel spreadsheet, your Word dialog box will remain open, patiently awaiting your return. In fact, you could perform the same trick within Excel, opening a JPEG image for editing from within the Excel ‘Save As’ dialog box, in true babushka doll fashion.

Microsoft Word lets you perform another handy trick via the file dialog box: you can copy the contents of one document into another one.

1. Press F12 to display the ‘Save As’ dialog box.
2. Right-click any Word document and select Copy.
3. Click Cancel to close the dialog box.
4. Press Ctrl-V to paste the contents of the file into the document you’re currently editing.

Note that this technique doesn’t work if you try it with any other type of file or in most other programs; either nothing happens or you end up inserting the file itself — not the contents of the file — into the document you’re editing.

Related posts:

1. Find where a file is stored
2. Windows XP Control Panel shortcuts
3. Using the handy SendTo command

Restore icon layout

If you use the previous tip to resize your icons or you change screen resolutions frequently or if something else alters the tidy arrangement of your desktop icons, a tiny program by Jamie O’Connell called Desktop Restore will make your life easier. Desktop Restore lets you save multiple desktop icon layouts: one for each resolution you use plus additional custom layouts. You can then restore any of those layouts with a click or two.

Once you install the program, use it by right-clicking an empty spot on the desktop and choosing Save Desktop from the pop-up menu. Desktop Restore saves the layout with the current resolution as the layout name. If you mess up your icons, right-click the desktop once more and choose Restore Desktop; the program will automatically restore the correct layout for your currently displayed resolution. A Custom Save/Restore option lets you save and name additional layouts and choose which layout to restore from a list.

Related posts:

1. A dozen quick ways to improve your desktop
2. Customising Windows
3. Dialog box shortcuts

1. Open the folder.
2. Right-click the breadcrumb bar and select Copy Address.
3. Minimise the open folder, right-click within another folder or on the desktop and choose Paste from the pop-up menu. A copy of the folder and all its contents will be placed in the destination folder

Related posts:

1. Using the handy SendTo command
2. Breadcrumbing
3. Mac tip: A shortcut through enclosing folders

To use Send To, all you do is right-click a file or folder, select Send To from the pop-up menu, and select a destination to copy, upload or email the item.

Windows pre-populates the Send To menu with a selection of destinations and shortcuts, and some applications add further shortcuts to the list. You can add your own twists to the Send To menu, too. For example, you can add folders where you archive or store documents to the Send To destination list.

Shortcuts to the destinations which appear in the Send To list are stored in a special folder called SendTo (note there’s no space between Send and To in the folder name). In Windows XP, you’ll find the SendTo folder located in:

C:\Documents and Settings\username

where username is your Windows log-on name.

In Vista you’ll have to dig deep to find the SendTo folder:

1. Click Start then click your log-on name to open your user folder.
2. Click down through AppData -> Roaming -> Microsoft -> Windows -> SendTo.

Of course, as is often the case with Vista, instead of digging down through this list of folders you can quickly jump to the SendTo folder by using the search box: Click Start, type sendto in the search box and click the SendTo folder in the Files list.

As well as adding shortcuts to folders and network drives to the SendTo folder, you can also add programs. When you Send To a program, the document you select will be opened in that program. For example, you might want to add a shortcut to Notepad to the SendTo folder so you can quickly open a document in a plain text editor.

Send To SendTo

If you frequently modify the Send To list, instead of opening the SendTo folder in order to add new shortcuts, you can add a shortcut to the SendTo folder to the SendTo folder itself. When you do so, you’ll be able to add a new destination to the Send To list simply by right-clicking the destination (folder, network drive or program) and selecting Send To -> SendTo. It sounds a little mind boggling, but it’s very simple in practice:

1. Open your user folder then navigate down to AppData -> Roaming -> Microsoft -> Windows.
2. Right-click the SendTo folder and select Create Shortcut.
3. Rename the shortcut SendTo.
4. Drag the shortcut into the SendTo folder.

Once that’s done, whenever you want to add a new destination to the Send To list, right click the destination and select Send To -> SendTo.

Related posts:

1. Quickly copy a folder’s contents
2. Breadcrumbing
3. Automatically open the last edited document in Word

While many of the settings in the Control Panel are also accessible in other ways – for instance, you can change the desktop appearance by right-clicking the desktop and choosing Properties from the pop-up menu or by opening the Display applet in the Control Panel – the Control Panel makes it easy to keep tabs on all your Windows settings.

Control Panel categories

In Windows XP, the Control Panel has two modes. The default mode, in the Home Edition, is the colourful and friendly Category View, which divvies up the Control Panel applets into nine categories: Appearance and Themes; Network and Internet Connections; Add or Remove Programs; Sounds, Speech, And Audio Devices; Performance and Maintenance; Printers and Other Hardware; User Accounts; Date, Time, Language and Regional Options; and Accessibility Options.

There’s actually a tenth category – easy to miss as it is only available via the task pane – called Other Control Panel Options. This is where Windows puts Control Panel applets installed by third-party applications, such as a QuickTime control or a special display control for your video card.

The other way to view the Control Panel is by the Classic View, familiar to anyone who has used the Control Panel in previous versions of Windows. In Classic View, all the applets are dumped into the one folder. It may be a little intimidating to start with, but it makes it much easier to track down all the Control Panel items and reduces the number of clicks required to access them.

You open the Control Panel by clicking Start -> Control Panel. If it’s not on your Start Menu, it’s easy to add:

1. Right-click the Start button and choose Properties from the pop-up menu.
2. On the Start Menu tab, make sure the first (non-classic) Start Menu option is selected and click Customize.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. In the Start Menu Items list under the Control Panel section, select either Display As Link or Display As Menu. The former (the default) simply displays a Control Panel option on the Start Menu; the latter displays the Control Panel option with a cascading menu providing direct access to each Control Panel applet. I prefer the former because I like to create shortcuts to only those applets I use often – I’ll show you how soon; I can do without the others cluttering up my Start Menu.
5. Click OK twice to exit the dialogs.

Note, if you use the Display As Menu option for the Control Panel, you can still open the standard Control Panel window by clicking Start and then right-clicking the Control Panel option in the Start Menu and selecting Open from the pop-up menu.

Quick access

Some Control Panel applets are pretty esoteric and you’re unlikely to call on them often, if at all. For example, the Java Plug-in control, which makes an appearance in the Control Panel if you install any version of the Java Runtime Engine, is something most of us never need to touch.

Other applets, though, are so useful you’ll want to make them as easy to get at as possible. In last month’s column, I showed you how to create shortcuts to Control Panel applets such as Add Or Remove Programs by dragging them onto your Quick Launch bar. That gives you single-click access to your favourite applets.

If you have half a dozen Control Panel favourites, instead of cluttering up your Quick Launch bar you can always create a custom Control Panel folder which you can access either by the Start Menu or via the Quick Launch bar. This works much like the Display As Menu option described above, but in this case you get to pick and choose which applets appear in the menu (see the section Roll your own Control Panel below).

Want to see the Control Panel in My Computer? You can add it via the Folder Options dialog: open any folder, choose Folder Options from the Tools Menu, click the View tab and select the option.

Tab hopping

Another way to burrow down quickly to out-of-the-way Control Panel settings is to make a direct call to the specific Control Panel applet. Using this technique you can even open a Control Panel applet to a specific tab.

For instance, if you frequently tinker with the sounds events on your system, normally you get to these settings by clicking Start -> Control Panel -> Sounds, Speech and Audio Devices -> Change the Sound Scheme. Using a direct call, you can get there much faster.

First, a bit of background. Control Panel applets are stored in files with a .cpl extension. If you take a look in your Windows\System32 folder you’ll find them there. (It makes it easier to see them all if you right-click in a blank spot and choose Arrange Icons By -> Type, select the Details View, and then scroll down the list and look for Control Panel Extensions.) You can run any applet by double-clicking its cpl file.

A faster way to run any applet is to issue a direct command:

control applet.cpl

where applet is any Control Panel applet on your system. Table 1 shows a list of the most common ones. Simply typing control by itself opens the Control Panel.

So, for example, to open the Sounds and Audio Device Properties dialog you click Start -> Run, type:

control mmsys.cpl

and click OK.

How, then, do you gain access to a specific tab in that dialog box? You use an extended form of the Control command:

control applet.cpl,@applet_number,tab_number

The applet_number is rarely required. There are a couple of cpl files which give access to multiple applets and in those cases you use the applet_number to identify which one you’re calling. For example, main.cpl provides access to both the Mouse and the Keyboard properties. The numbering starts at 0, so control main.cpl,@0 opens the Mouse Properties, control main.cpl,@1 opens the Keyboard Properties. If you don’t include an applet_number, @0 is assumed.

The tab_number is the number of the tab you want selected in the dialog box, with numbering starting from 0 from the left.

If you want to use a tab_number but want to omit the applet_number (or leave its value at 0), insert an extra comma before the tab_number to indicate the missing value. Thus:

control main.cpl,,3

opens the Mouse Properties dialog to its fourth tab.

So to open the Sounds and Audio Device Properties dialog with the Sounds tab already selected, click Start -> Run and enter the command:

control mmsys.cpl,,1

Tab shortcuts

Instead of typing these commands each time, create a desktop shortcut for your favourites and then stick them in the Quick Launch bar or wherever else you choose:

1. Right-click the desktop and choose New -> Shortcut.
2. Type the appropriate command in the Create Shortcut dialog and click Next. For example:
   control appwiz.cpl,,2

(this will open the Add Or Remove Programs dialog with the Add/Remove Windows Components section selected).

3. Give your shortcut a descriptive name, such as Remove Windows Components, and click Finish.

Step-by-step: Roll your own Control Panel

1. It’s easy to create a Control Panel which contains only your most frequently used applets.

Start by right-clicking the Start button and choosing Open. This opens the \Documents and Settings\username\Start Menu folder (where username is your Windows logon name).

2. Create a new folder within this folder and call it whatever you like – My Controls, for example. Then click Start -> Control Panel to open the original Control Panel and click Switch To Classic View if you’re not already in that mode. Position the two folders side by side.

3. Right-click-and-drag your favourite applets from the Control Panel folder into your My Controls folder and choose Create Shortcut(s) Here when prompted, then close both folders.

4. You can access the applets in this folder by clicking Start -> All Programs -> My Controls. You can also stick the folder on your Quick Launch bar:

1. Click Start -> All Programs.
2. Hold down the Ctrl key and drag the My Controls item onto the Quick Launch bar.

In this way, you can gain quick access to all your favourite applets while adding only a single icon to the Quick Launch bar.

Related posts:

1. Dialog box shortcuts
2. Customising Windows
3. Setting up a home network on Windows XP

Why should you bother with the housework? A couple of reasons. First, disks are hard working, mechanical devices and, like all mechanical devices, prone to failure. A little preventative maintenance can warn you of potential problems and fix minor glitches before they can do damage to your data.

Second, the way files are organised on your drive has a perceptible impact on the performance of your computer. If your files are stored neatly, end-to-end, without fragmentation, reading and writing to the disk is speedier.

What is file fragmentation?

Sometimes when you install a program or create a data file, the file ends up chopped up into chunks and stored in multiple locations on the disk. This is called fragmentation.

What makes this happen?

When you first install your operating system and programs on your hard disk, they are written to the disk, for the most part, in one contiguous block without any gaps. The exceptions are certain system files that must be stored in specific locations. Over time, as you create and then delete documents or uninstall programs, once-filled locations are left empty and you end up with files dotted all over the disk.

Now, when Windows is writing a file to the disk, it looks for a suitable piece of free space in which to store it. What happens, then, when you copy a 40MB database or a 100MB video clip to the disk and the biggest slice of free space is only 30MB? Or say you modify an existing file, appending a whole bunch of data so the file now takes up more space on the disk. To accommodate the files, Windows writes the first part of the file in one section of the disk and then scouts around for other places to store the rest of the file. The end result is that a single file may be stored in several chunks scattered about the disk.

Of FAT and files

Your operating system needs to have a way of keeping track of each file’s location. Windows 98 and Windows Me use a system called FAT32. The ‘FAT’ stands for File Allocation Table. When your file is written to disk, FAT32 provides Windows with the address of an unoccupied disk cluster. FAT32 also tells Windows on which disk sectors it will find that cluster; that is, it provides the physical location of the cluster. This information is used by your PC’s BIOS (the Basic Input/Output System) to direct the actual disk writing operation.

If the file is too large to fit in a single cluster, Windows asks FAT32 for another vacant cluster, and another, and another until the whole file is written to disk. If you have lots of free clusters side by side, FAT32 can point Windows to an adjacent series of clusters, resulting in a file which occupies one contiguous chunk of the disk. If no adjacent cluster is available, FAT32 tracks down a space elsewhere on the disk and tells Windows to put the next bit of the file there; and so on until the full file is written to disk.

A record of the clusters used for storing the file is kept by FAT32 so Windows can find the file once more when you want to read it.

The fragmentation penalty

Although this all happens quickly, it makes a lot of work for your hard disk. Its read/write head, which moves across the drive platter from location to location transferring data, has to zip all over the place when saving or opening a single highly fragmented file. (By the way, many disks have more than one read/write head and multiple platters.) If a file is unfragmented, the disk head moves to one location, reads the file in one sequential swoop, and that’s it.

A file stored in, say, four fragments, can easily take twice as long to open as the same file unfragmented, although the actual performance hit you take is affected by other factors, including the total size of the file.

Defragging

There’s a simple solution to file fragmentation: use Windows Disk Defragmenter. To do so, click:

Start –> (All) Programs –> Accessories –> System Tools –> Disk Defragmenter

This utility, commonly called Defrag, gathers all the scattered file fragments and writes them into adjacent clusters, so each file occupies an unbroken section of the disk.

Defrag works by moving slabs of data to unused parts of the disk, in order to open up a large free section of space. It then assembles the fragmented parts of a file and writes them in one complete piece to the cleared space; it then does the same with the next file; and so on until the entire disk is defragmented.

Powerful alternatives

The built-in Disk Defragmenter is a utility which has been hobbled by the rapid advance of drive technology. It works just fine on a disk of 8G or so; but use it on a 20G drive or – if you dare – an even larger drive and you can say goodbye to using your computer for the most part of a day. Although Microsoft says it’s okay for you to use your computer while defragging, in practice this rarely works, because every write to disk causes Defrag to restart.

If you’d like to speed up Defrag and eliminate some of its problems, try one of the commercial defraggers. They’re far more at home with large hard drives, run on all versions of Windows from XP onwards, and they provide a less frustrating experience. Some of the alternatives are:

• Diskeeper
• PerfectDisk
• Puran Defrag

Step-by-step: Efficient defragging

1. Defrag works most efficiently when your drive has ample space for its operations. If you run Defrag with a drive that’s chockablock, it must work like mad simply to clear enough space to start writing files. So it pays to delete all unnecessary files before you start defragging. Uninstall unwanted programs, archive old data, delete unwanted backups, and then run Disk Cleanup (Start –> (All) Programs –> Accessories –> System Tools –> Disk Cleanup).

2. Defrag also works best when completely uninterrupted. Background programs such as Task Scheduler and anti-virus software can cause Defrag to stop and restart repeatedly. To avoid such interruptions, do a clean boot before running Defrag:
   a. Click Start –> Run, type msconfig in the Open box and click OK to open the System Configuration Utility.
   b. On the General tab, click Selective Startup and remove the ticks beside Process System.ini File, Process Win.ini File and Load Startup Group Items. (On some versions of Windows you may also see Config.sys, Autoexec.bat and Winstart.bat options – remove the ticks beside these as well).
   c. Click OK and allow your computer to restart.

3. Once you’ve cleaned out unnecessary files and stopped background programs from loading, you’re ready to defrag:
   a. Click Start –> Programs –> Accessories –> System Tools –> Disk Defragmenter.
   b. Select the drive you wish to defrag.
   c. Click Settings and make sure there’s a tick beside the two options in the section When Defragmenting My Hard Drive, then click OK twice to begin.
   d. After Defrag has finished, open the System Configuration Utility once more, click Normal Startup on the General tab, click OK and reboot.

Related posts:

1. Installing Windows 7 onto a disc-less computer
2. Find where a file is stored
3. Recovering deleted files