Practicing the Black Art (02/02)
Are you saved?
by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@home.com
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
Many people have difficulty finding their data because they pay little or no attention to where they save their files. The same lack of attention is given to naming files. This happens because a lot of folks have no idea where a file ends up when downloading it from the Web, or trying to save it in a word processor. One of the most important things you can do to avoid these unnecessary problems is to understand how to use the Save and the Save As... dialog boxes.
If you are saving something for the very first time Windows is going to present you with the Save As... dialog box. The box appears because Windows doesn't know which folder to save your work in, or what to name it.
The following list shows how the Save As... dialog box can appear on your system:
- Opening the File menu and clicking on the Save As... option, always brings up the dialog box.
- Clicking on the Save option in the File menu will produce the dialog box only if you're saving the document for the very first time. Once you specify a folder and file name, Windows simply saves the changes and doesn't ask for the information again.
- Clicking the Save button on the Toolbar brings up the dialog box the first time you save a document. If you've previously saved the document, Windows saves the changes and doesn't bring up the box.
- Using the keystroke combination Ctrl + S will produce the dialog box only if you're saving the document for the very first time. Once you specify a folder and file name, Windows, as in item 2, simply saves the changes and doesn't ask for the information again.
- Pressing the F3 function key always brings up the dialog box.
- Creating a new document and then trying to exit the program without saving will get you a confirmation dialog box asking if you want to save your work. If you answer Yes, you will see the Save As... dialog box.
Windows will desperately try to save your work, even if you forget to save your changes. The computer does this through dialog boxes which establish a conversation between you and your computer through the Windows environment. You begin the dialog when you ask Windows to save your work. Windows responds with a dialog box that asks "OK, where do you want me to save the file, and what do you want to call it?" Windows does not have any other method of communicating with you which may explain why a typical response is to stare at the box in dull-witted incomprehension until the eyes glaze over, foam appears at the mouth and a state of temporary insanity takes over. This is what sometimes happens when otherwise reasonable people are asked to make a decision under duress.
Let's look at the Save As... dialog box that appears when you attempt to save your Word 2000 document and understand its options. Other applications that run under Windows have similar dialog boxes.
Save In
The "Save in" drop-down list (see Figure 1) displays icons representing your Windows desktop, the disk drives available to your computer, the Network Neighborhood through which you can reach other computers on your network (or My Network Places if you're using Windows XP), and the folder hierarchy leading down to the current folder. The current folder is where your file will be saved when you choose Save. In the example above, the current folder is the February 2002 subfolder of the Black Art of Computing, which is a subfolder of the Wpdocs folder stored on the hard drive D, which is named APPLS. Alternately, you can choose another item on the list to make it the current folder and display its contents in the list box.
List of Files and Folders
The large white area in the center of the dialog box (see Figure 2) generally lists the subfolders contained in the current folder, as well as any files in that folder matching the file type chosen in the "Save as type" box. (More on this later).
In addition to its name, each file item has a descriptive icon. Most of these icons are assigned based on the filename extension of the file in question, which usually indicates what type of file it is.
An extension is the part of a file name that follows the period. Depending on what version of Windows you're working with, an extension can be three or more characters long and usually indicates the nature of the file. The standard extension for a Word document is DOC as in Are You Saved.doc.
File Name
Name your document in this text box. Before Windows 95, file names had an eight character limit. One character was reserved for the period to act as a separator between the file name and its three character extension, giving you a whopping eleven characters. File names were very creative and downright cryptic before Windows 95. Even though you now have 256 characters available, resist the temptation to become verbose. Keep your file names simple and meaningful, and you will have little trouble finding them.
Note: When you type the name of your document in the File Name: text box, you don't have to include the extension as part of the name. Windows tacks it on to the end of the file automatically. If you do include it, Windows won't put it redundantly. In addition, Windows lets you turn off the display of those extensions that are associated with a specific application, so you may not see the .DOC extension at the ends of your Word document names.
Save as type
This option gives you a list of the various file formats available. In Word, the default option stores documents in Word Document format, which is usually the best alternative. It's also the default format which make the most sense since that's the most likely choice for anyone working in that application.
Other formats are available for various reasons. For example, if you plan on posting your work on the Web, you can store the document in HTML format. You can store documents in previous versions of Word, or in other word processor formats like WordPerfect.
If you want to send your document by email, but you don't know what word processor the recipient is using, try Rich Text Format (RTF) or plain text (TXT). One of these usually works, but some graphics and fancy layouts may not transmit well. If you have conversion utilities installed on your system, your choices will be much wider.
The large icons on the left side of the dialog box are shortcuts to areas where Microsoft seems to think you would most likely store your documents. Draw your own conclusions.
This article is hardly the last word on saving your documents, but enough of the basics are here to help you save and more importantly find your work on any Windows system. :
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Copyright 2002. This article is from the February 2002 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
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