Know How to Manage Files And Understand Different File Types

Files are the building blocks of what makes your computer run and your projects and websites work. Know them well and they will serve you well…

Files Store Your Information

Like a file in a filing cabinet, files are the organized information for your computer. In your filing cabinet, you might store tax information, insurance papers, legal documents, and bills. You might even organize these in folders labeled “Bills”, “Legal”, and “Insurance.” For your computer, this is no different, except it is all stored digitally and electronically – and much quicker and easier to access!

You might also store different kinds of things in your filing cabinet. For instance, you could have some photos of your family members for quick identification. You could have a copy of your driver’s license. You could have a stapled set of documents for a will. And you might also have a passport in case you need to travel outside the country. You might even label these with “Passport”, “License”, “Will”, and “Family Photos.”

What we know now is that there is a filing cabinet and in the filing cabinet, there are folders. Folders are like the envelope containers that contain documents. Each folder can contain one or more files.

These different kinds of “things” can also be stored on your computer. On your computer you might have:

• Pictures of your family and children in your “Family” folder.
• Audio files of music in your “Music” folder.
• Videos of a family vacation in your “Videos” folder.
• A text manuscript of a book being written in your “Documents” folder.

Think of the filing cabinet as your hard drive. This is simply a device in your computer which stores your files electronically. On your computer, you might have many different folders. And in these folders you could have different files. And each file would have a name and be in a folder, just like the documents you might put in your own filing cabinet. To distinguish what kind of file type each is, the computer has a file extension.

For instance, a picture generally has a .jpg, or .png extension. So you might have “me.jpg” and “wife.jpg”.

An audio file might have .mp3 or .wav. In this case you might have “mysong.mp3″.

A video might have .mpg. A family video might be called “vacation.mpg”.

Your book text manuscript might have .txt or .doc. This might be called “mybook.doc”.

Don’t worry about what these file extensions mean for now, just know that different files have different extensions to them.

Here’s a list of common file extensions and what they mean. These are very important as you use your computer to create and retrieve information.

• .txt – Text File (just plain text with letters and numbers, usually for notes or general purpose writing).
• .doc – Microsoft Word (used for storing plain text, or making a more advanced document with images and other features).
• .jpg, .png, .gif (These are image formats. These are used for photos and images created using PhotoShop, for instance).
• .mp3, .wav (These are examples of what a sound file would have as an extension. This is used for opening files that will play using your headphones or speakers, like a song).
• .html, .htm (These are the file formats for web pages. We’ll get into these more later).
• .exe (Any file that can be run as a separate program on your computer).

This lesson was meant to familiarize you with folders and files. Your filing cabinet is like the hard drive on your computer – it stores all your files and folders. Each file in a physical folder or in a folder on your computer will be of a different type – like a document, picture, or audio/sound file. Once you are familiar with different file types, it becomes much easier to use your computer to build and create whatever you want.