The provided text serves as a beginner’s guide to navigating and customizing the Windows 11 operating system. It explains fundamental elements such as the taskbar, start menu, and desktop, detailing how to interact with icons, open applications, and manage windows. The text further instructs users on personalizing their experience through settings adjustments like display resolution, text size, and taskbar behavior. Finally, it covers essential file management skills using File Explorer and introduces the concepts of cut, copy, and paste, along with guidance on basic internet browsing with Microsoft Edge.

Windows 11 Orientation Study Guide

Quiz

Where is the Start button located in Windows 11, and what appears when you click it?
Explain the “pinned apps” and “recommended” sections of the Start menu. How can you manage pinned apps?
Describe two ways to launch an application in Windows 11 and highlight a key difference in how you interact with icons in those locations.
How do you shut down or restart your Windows 11 computer using the Start menu? Why is restarting periodically recommended?
Explain how to pin and unpin applications from the taskbar. Why might you want to customize the taskbar?
What is the purpose of the small upward-pointing arrow icon on the right side of the taskbar? What kind of applications might you find there?
Describe the functionality of Microsoft OneDrive as explained in the source.
Explain how to access and adjust the volume and network settings from the taskbar. What other settings can be found in this area?
What is the “Task View” feature in Windows 11, and how can you access it? How does it help with managing open windows?
Explain the difference between “cut and paste” and “copy and paste” when working with files or text in Windows. What are the keyboard shortcuts for these actions?

Quiz Answer Key

In Windows 11, the Start button is located in the center of the taskbar. Clicking it opens a menu displaying pinned applications at the top and recommended recent files, folders, and newly installed apps below.
“Pinned apps” are applications that have been manually placed in the Start menu for easy access. “Recommended” shows recently opened files, folders, and recently installed applications. You can manage pinned apps by right-clicking on an app icon in the Start menu and selecting “Pin to Start” or “Unpin from Start.”
You can launch an application by single-clicking its icon in the Start menu or on the taskbar. You can also launch an application by double-clicking its icon on the desktop. A key difference is that you single-click icons in the Start menu and taskbar, but double-click icons on the desktop to open them.
To shut down or restart, click the Start button, then click the power icon located at the bottom right of the Start menu. From there, you can choose “Shut down” or “Restart.” Restarting periodically is recommended to refresh the system, as programs can accumulate memory and resources over time, potentially slowing down the computer.
To pin an application to the taskbar, find the application (either in the Start menu or the “All apps” list), right-click on its icon, and select “Pin to taskbar.” To unpin an application, right-click on its icon on the taskbar and select “Unpin from taskbar.” Customizing the taskbar allows you to keep frequently used applications readily accessible.
The small upward-pointing arrow icon on the right side of the taskbar reveals a hidden area for background applications that don’t always need to be visible. Examples of applications found here include Windows Security (antivirus) and other utilities running in the background.
Microsoft OneDrive is a cloud storage service that allows you to save files online and synchronize them across multiple devices, such as a desktop and a laptop. This ensures that changes made on one device are automatically updated on others, eliminating the need for physical storage devices for transferring files.
Clicking the network or volume icon on the right side of the taskbar opens a panel where you can adjust volume using a slider and see your network connection status. This area also provides access to other settings like airplane mode (if applicable), accessibility settings, and the Night Light feature to reduce blue light emissions.
Task View is a feature in Windows 11 that displays all currently open windows as thumbnails, allowing you to quickly switch between them. You can access it by clicking the Task View button on the taskbar (it looks like overlapping rectangles) or by pressing the Windows key + Tab. It helps manage multiple open applications by providing a visual overview.
“Cut and paste” moves an item (text, file, or folder) from its original location to a new location. The original item is removed. “Copy and paste” creates a duplicate of the item in a new location, while the original item remains in its original place. The keyboard shortcut for cut is Ctrl+X, for copy is Ctrl+C, and for paste is Ctrl+V.

Essay Format Questions

Discuss the evolution of the Windows Start Menu from earlier versions to Windows 11. Analyze the changes in its design and functionality, and evaluate the potential benefits and drawbacks of these changes for user experience and productivity as described in the source.
Explain the importance of taskbar customization in Windows 11. Describe the various ways a user can personalize their taskbar, including pinning/unpinning applications and modifying taskbar behaviors. Discuss how effective taskbar customization can contribute to a more efficient workflow based on the information provided.
The source emphasizes the built-in security features of Windows 11 and cautions against unnecessary third-party antivirus software. Elaborate on the advice given regarding Windows Security. Discuss the reasoning behind this recommendation and the potential advantages and disadvantages of relying solely on the built-in antivirus.
Describe the basic file management functionalities in Windows 11 as explained in the source, including creating folders, moving and copying files, and understanding file extensions. Explain the importance of organizing files and folders effectively and how the features discussed can aid in this process.
The source provides guidance on initial setup and basic troubleshooting, such as restarting and managing updates. Based on this information, discuss the key recommendations for maintaining a stable and functional Windows 11 system for a new user.

Glossary of Key Terms

Taskbar: The bar located at the bottom of the Windows desktop that displays the Start button, pinned applications, and system information.
Start Button: An icon (typically a Windows logo) on the taskbar that, when clicked, opens the Start Menu.
Pinned Apps: Applications that users have chosen to display in the Start Menu or on the taskbar for quick access.
Recommended: A section in the Start Menu that displays recently opened files, folders, and newly installed applications.
All Apps: A section in the Start Menu that lists all installed applications on the computer.
Desktop: The main visual work area on a computer screen, displaying icons and the background wallpaper.
Power Button (Start Menu): An icon in the Start Menu used to access power options such as Shut down, Restart, and Sleep.
System Tray (Notification Area): The area on the far right of the taskbar that displays icons for background processes, notifications, date, and time.
Widgets: Dynamic information displays (like weather, news) that can be accessed from the left side of the Windows 11 taskbar.
Task View: A feature that displays thumbnails of all open windows, allowing for easy switching between them.
Taskbar Behaviors: Settings that control how the taskbar functions, such as alignment and how buttons are combined.
File Explorer: The file management application in Windows used to browse, organize, and manage files and folders.
File Name Extension: A suffix at the end of a file name (e.g., .pdf, .exe, .jpg) that indicates the file type.
Control Panel: A system utility in Windows that allows users to configure various settings, although many of its functions are now integrated into the Settings app.
Settings App: The modern interface in Windows 11 for configuring system settings, replacing much of the functionality of the Control Panel.
Windows Update: A service that allows Windows to download and install updates for the operating system and other Microsoft software.
Personalization: Settings that allow users to customize the visual appearance of Windows, such as background, colors, and themes.
Accessibility: Features and settings designed to make computers easier to use for people with disabilities, such as text size adjustments and high contrast themes.
Cut: A command that removes selected content from its original location and places it on the clipboard.
Copy: A command that duplicates selected content and places the copy on the clipboard, while the original remains.
Paste: A command that inserts the content currently stored on the clipboard into the current location.
Clipboard: A temporary storage area in computer memory used for holding data that has been cut or copied.
Microsoft Edge: The default web browser included with Windows.
OneDrive: Microsoft’s cloud storage and file synchronization service.

Windows 11 Orientation: A Briefing Document

This briefing document summarizes the main themes and important ideas from the provided source, which serves as an introductory guide to Windows 11. The source focuses on familiarizing new users with the operating system’s interface, key functionalities, and essential settings.

Main Themes

Interface Navigation: The primary focus is on helping users understand and navigate the Windows 11 desktop environment, including the Taskbar and the Start Menu.
Essential System Functions: The guide covers critical actions such as launching applications, managing files and folders, connecting to the internet, and shutting down/restarting the computer.
Basic Customization and Settings: It introduces users to fundamental personalization options for the Taskbar, Desktop background, display, and accessibility features like text and cursor size.
Internet Access and Web Browsing: The source provides a step-by-step walkthrough of launching and using Microsoft Edge for the first time, along with basic web browsing concepts.
File Management Fundamentals: It explains core concepts like cut, copy, paste, and basic file and folder organization using File Explorer.
Importance of System Maintenance: The guide emphasizes the need for regular restarts and software updates to ensure system stability and security.
Security Considerations: It touches upon the built-in Windows Security and advises caution regarding third-party security software and online scams.

Most Important Ideas and Facts

The Taskbar

The Start button has moved from the far left to the center of the Taskbar.
“start button on all other versions of Windows prior to Windows 11 was always on the far left right now the far left is taken up by this little widget area all right but start button right here”
Clicking the Start button reveals pinned apps (default and user-defined) and recommended items (recent files, folders, and newly installed apps).
“when you click on your start button you get a view of a bunch of pinned apps which means uh just things that have been set into the uh default start area here right in front of you”
“underneath recommended you’re going to see uh recent files and folders that you’ve opened”
An All apps button in the top right of the Start Menu provides a full list of installed applications, accessible alphabetically with a jump-to-letter feature.
“if you want to see all your apps you have to go to this little button right here in the top right hand corner and when you click there you get the full list of installed apps and all their little icons”
Users can pin and unpin applications to both the Start Menu and the Taskbar for quick access.
“you can right click on it and say pin to start or if it’s already in start uh unpin from start”
“we could rightclick and we can say pin to taskar so so just as you can pin things into the start area you can pin and unpin things from the taskbar itself”
Single-clicking icons on the Taskbar or within the Start Menu opens applications, unlike the double-clicking required for desktop icons.
“double click on it from the desktop single click from start and single click when you’re looking at uh clicking on an icon in the taskbar”
The Power button is located within the Start Menu, offering options for shutdown, restart, and sleep. Shutdown is recommended over sleep for better system stability.
“when you’re done with Windows for the day you can click on the start button click on this little power icon and then click shut down I recommend shutting down over sleep”
Restarting the computer regularly (ideally daily or at least weekly) is important for releasing memory and resources, preventing system sluggishness.
“you shouldn’t let a computer run say for 30 days without restarting it because what happens is programs take up bits of memory and resources and they don’t always release them”
The right side of the Taskbar includes a hidden icons area (accessed via an upward arrow) for background applications like Windows Security.
“if you click on that and you may not have one depending on how many icons you have at play but uh what this is is like an area where they hide icons that are just for things that are just running in the background”
Visible icons on the right Taskbar provide access to features like OneDrive, language settings, network status, and volume control. Clicking the network or volume icon opens a quick settings panel.
“things that aren’t in this little hidden menu are the more visible icons that we see to the left of the uh time and here so uh one of these is Microsoft One Drive… and here is our little language area… and then we have our little Network icon… so the next one over is volume”
The notification area (bell icon) displays system notifications. Users should be cautious of urgent-sounding notifications, especially from websites, as they could be scams.
“right next to that we have a little notification area that little bell here… notifications do pop up just like this in the lower right hand corner… be careful because uh people can also get uh notifications from websites and other third parties… be wary of scams and stuff right”

The Desktop

The area above the Taskbar is called the desktop, featuring a customizable wallpaper and icons for software and utilities.

Taskbar Settings

Right-clicking the Taskbar and selecting Taskbar settings allows customization of Taskbar elements and behaviors.
Users can hide or change the appearance of the search bar, widgets, and the Task View button.
The Taskbar alignment can be changed to move the Start button back to the left.
“come down to the bottom here where it says taskbar behaviors right and click the little arrow pointing down there and then it has taskar alignment and you can choose to place the start button back on the left where your brain expects it to be”
The setting “Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels” controls how multiple windows of the same application are displayed on the Taskbar. “Never” will show each window separately with its label.
“where it says combine taskbar buttons and hide labels right so generally by default it’s on to always do that… if we switch this to uh never for example now instead of that layered File Explorer icon… now it actually shows me that I’m in pictures music and desktop”

Desktop Icons

Right-clicking a desktop icon provides a context menu with options like cut, copy, rename (represented by an icon), share, and delete.
Deleted items are moved to the Recycle Bin and can be restored.

Internet Access with Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge is the default web browser in Windows 11.
The first-time setup of Edge involves several prompts regarding data syncing, tracking, and theme selection. Beginners are advised to “start without your data” and decline most tracking offers to reduce complexity.
“this is the first time it’s sprun so you know welcome to Microsoft Edge and it’s going to ask you if you want to sign in to sync data right… but you know we’re beginners here so we’re going to say start without your data right now it’s going to ask you know you always want to have access to your recent browsing data right typically I like to say no to most of these offers”
The default homepage is Microsoft Bing. Users can navigate to other websites by typing the URL in the address bar.
Web browsing involves tabs, which can be opened using the “+” icon or by right-clicking a link and selecting “open link in new tab.” Tabs can be reordered.
The three-dot menu in Edge provides access to settings and other functionalities, including the option to hide the sidebar.
“this these three little dots here is the menu for all kinds of things right and that’s standard on Windows these days”
The default search engine used in the Edge address bar can be changed in the browser’s settings (e.g., from Bing to Google).

Windows 11 Settings

The main Windows 11 Settings app can be accessed by right-clicking the Start button and selecting “Settings.” It is organized into different categories for system configuration.
Windows Update allows users to check for and install updates for Windows and other Microsoft products. Optional updates, including driver updates, can be found in Advanced options. Restarting the computer is often required to complete updates.
“right click on the start button and then click on settings right… Windows update if you click on that you can click on check for updates”
Personalization settings enable users to change the background (picture, solid color, slideshow, Windows Spotlight), colors, and themes, including high contrast themes for accessibility.
“One you might want to jump into right away if you like things to look the way you like them to look is personalization right and here is where you can change background and colors and themes Etc”
The classic Control Panel is still accessible by searching for “control” in the Start Menu. It provides access to various system settings.
“you can click on the start button but and type in the word control and you’ll see the control panel come up as an offering”
Key Control Panel settings include:
Mouse: Adjusting double-click speed and changing the pointer size and visibility (e.g., showing pointer location with the Ctrl key).
“One thing that I like to do on every new system is click on Mouse right and then here under double click speed I pull that all the way to the left so that it’s slow… I like to go down to Windows standard extra large right”
Power Options: Configuring power plans and sleep settings.
“another feature I would point out to you uh right now is programs and features so if we click on that uh it’s going to show us a list of all the programs that are installed on the system”
Programs and Features: Managing traditionally installed software. Note that modern “apps” are often managed differently (e.g., via right-click in the Start Menu).
Devices and Printers: Accessing settings for connected devices.
Date and Time: Adjusting the system date, time, and time zone. It’s recommended to set the correct time zone first.
“often that’s wrong when you get a new computer and you’re sitting in front of it the time Zone’s wrong or the or the just the time your right time zone but the time is off by a few minutes so you can jump in here and click on change date and time… also you can change your time zone right”

Cut, Copy, and Paste

Cut (Ctrl+X): Moves selected text or files to the clipboard, removing them from the original location.
Copy (Ctrl+C): Duplicates selected text or files to the clipboard, leaving the original intact.
Paste (Ctrl+V): Inserts the content of the clipboard into the current location.
These functions work with text in applications like Notepad and with files and folders in File Explorer. Right-click menus also provide these options (often as icons in Windows 11).
“The default keys for uh those commands are it’s control X for cut… copy is contrl c for copy and then uh pasting is contrl V right”

File Explorer

File Explorer is used to manage files and folders.
The left-hand navigation pane can be resized.
It’s useful to show file name extensions in the View settings to easily identify file types.
“what I like to do is click on view View and then go to show and then choose or select file name extensions right and then uh instead of it just saying Firefox installer here now it says Firefox installer.exe”
The “Expand to open folder” option (in Options > View) makes the navigation pane on the left dynamically display the currently open folder in the file system hierarchy (though this feature has a temporary bug in a recent update).
“if we scroll down to the bottom here I choose expand to open folder”
Files and folders can be viewed in different layouts (e.g., extra large icons, details). The “Details” view is recommended as it shows name, date modified, type, and size. Columns can be clicked to sort by that attribute.
“the one I tend to like is the details view here so that gives you the name the date modified the type and the size right and you can you can click on any of these headings to sort by that bit”
Users can create new folders by right-clicking in an empty area or using the “New” button in the ribbon. Files and folders can be dragged and dropped between locations.
“make sure you’ve clicked on the right somewhere in the white space on the right hand side right right and then you can click on new up here in the upper left and choose folder”
Right-clicking is context-sensitive, offering different menus and options depending on the element clicked.

Display and Text Size

In Display settings (right-click desktop > Display settings), users can adjust the screen resolution. While the recommended resolution is usually the default, lower resolutions can make interface elements appear larger. Avoid resolutions with a vertical height below 768.
“you can click on display resolution here and choose a different resolution now the higher the highest number it tends to be the uh recommended resolution for your monitor and usually that’s going to be your default right but uh if you choose some smaller numbers uh you may find that uh everything just looks uh you know that much bigger and more visually accessible for you”
Text size can be adjusted in Accessibility settings (search “text size” in Settings). A slider allows users to increase or decrease the default text size. Be cautious of making text too large, as it may cause layout issues in some applications.
“in the uh find a setting area here just type in the word text and you’ll see text size all right click on that it’ll bring you to the accessibility Tex size area and there’s a little slider here”

This briefing document provides a foundational understanding of the Windows 11 interface and essential functions as described in the source. New users are encouraged to explore these areas further to become comfortable with the operating system.

Windows 11: Getting Started Guide

Frequently Asked Questions: Getting Started with Windows 11

1. Where is the Start Menu located in Windows 11, and how do I access my applications? In Windows 11, the Start button is located in the center of the taskbar, unlike previous versions where it was on the far left (that area is now occupied by the widgets). Clicking the Start button opens a view of pinned applications. You can navigate through multiple pages of pinned icons using the dots or arrows at the top. Below the pinned apps, you’ll find a “Recommended” section showing recent files, folders, and newly installed applications. To see a full list of all installed apps, click the “All apps” button in the top right corner of the Start Menu. Some apps may be located within folders, indicated by a yellow folder icon; click on the folder to see its contents. To quickly jump to apps starting with a specific letter, click on any letter in the app list, and it will highlight the sections of the alphabet that have content.

2. How do I pin and unpin applications to the Start Menu and Taskbar for quick access? To pin an application to the Start Menu, go to the “All apps” list (via the Start button), right-click on the desired application, and select “Pin to Start.” This will add the application’s icon to your pinned apps view in the Start Menu. To unpin an application from the Start Menu, simply right-click on its icon in the pinned apps area and select “Unpin from Start.” Similarly, you can pin applications to the Taskbar for even quicker access. From the “All apps” list or the Start Menu, right-click on an application and choose “Pin to taskbar.” To remove an application from the Taskbar, right-click on its icon on the Taskbar and select “Unpin from taskbar.”

3. What is the Taskbar, and how can I customize its appearance and behavior? The Taskbar is the bar located at the bottom of your screen in Windows 11. It contains the Start button, pinned applications, running applications (indicated by a small dot underneath their icons), widgets (on the far left), and the system tray (on the far right). You can customize the Taskbar by right-clicking on an empty area of it and selecting “Taskbar settings.” In the settings, you can toggle the visibility of search, task view, widgets, and the co-pilot (if available). Under “Taskbar behaviors,” you can change the “Taskbar alignment” to move the Start button back to the left. The “Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels” option controls how multiple windows of the same application are displayed; you can choose to always combine them (default), never combine them (showing individual icons with labels), or combine them when the taskbar is full. You can also unpin default icons you don’t use (like the Microsoft Store or Teams) by right-clicking on them and selecting “Unpin from taskbar.”

4. How do I manage running applications using the Taskbar and Task View? The Taskbar displays icons for applications that are currently running. A small underline or dot beneath an icon indicates that the application is open. Single-clicking on an icon in the Taskbar will bring that application to the forefront. Hovering your mouse over a combined application icon (if you have multiple windows of the same app open) will show you thumbnails of all the open windows, allowing you to choose the one you want. Task View, which can be enabled in the Taskbar settings, provides a visual overview of all currently open windows. Clicking the Task View button on the Taskbar (it looks like two overlapping rectangles) will display all your open windows as thumbnails, allowing you to easily switch between them by clicking on the desired window.

5. How do I shut down, restart, or put my Windows 11 computer to sleep? To shut down or restart your Windows 11 computer, click on the Start button, then click on the power icon located at the bottom right of the Start Menu. A small menu will appear with options to “Sleep,” “Shut down,” and “Restart.” It is generally recommended to shut down your computer fully rather than relying on sleep mode, as sleep can sometimes lead to issues with devices not waking up properly. Restarting your computer periodically (ideally daily or at least weekly) can help maintain system stability by clearing out used memory and resources that programs may not always release.

6. How do I connect to the internet using Microsoft Edge for the first time, and what are some basic browser navigation tips? To connect to the internet, click on the Microsoft Edge icon on the Taskbar (it’s the blue and green “e” icon). The first time you open Edge, you will be guided through a setup process. It will ask about syncing data (you can choose to “Start without your data” for a simpler initial setup), importing data from other browsers (you can skip this), and allowing Microsoft to track browsing data (you can choose “Don’t allow” for more privacy). After going through these steps and potentially selecting a theme, you will arrive at the Microsoft Bing homepage, indicating you are online. To navigate to a specific website, click in the address bar at the top and type the website’s address (e.g., google.com). You can open new tabs by clicking the “+” icon next to the existing tab. To open a link in a new tab, right-click on the link and select “Open link in new tab.” You can switch between tabs by clicking on them. To change the default search engine used in the address bar, click the three dots (…) in the top right corner of Edge, go to “Settings,” search for “address bar and search,” and then choose your preferred search engine from the drop-down menu. You can also disable the sidebar in Edge settings under the “Sidebar” section.

7. How do I manage files and folders using File Explorer in Windows 11? You can access File Explorer by clicking its icon on the Taskbar (it looks like a folder) or by searching for it in the Start Menu. In File Explorer, the left pane provides a navigation view of your folders. You can expand or collapse folders by clicking the small arrows next to them (though a recent Windows update may temporarily affect this functionality). The right pane displays the contents of the selected folder. You can change the view of files and folders (e.g., details, large icons) by clicking on the “View” tab at the top. To see file extensions (like .exe, .jpg), go to the “View” tab, click “Show,” and select “File name extensions.” To sort files and folders, click on the column headers (Name, Date modified, Type, Size). To create a new folder, navigate to the desired location, right-click in an empty area, select “New,” and then “Folder,” and give it a name. You can move or copy files and folders using cut (Ctrl+X), copy (Ctrl+C), and paste (Ctrl+V) commands, or by right-clicking and selecting the appropriate options. You can also drag and drop files and folders. Deleted items go to the Recycle Bin, from which you can restore them if needed.

8. How can I adjust display settings and text size in Windows 11 for better visual accessibility? To adjust display settings, right-click on an empty area of the desktop and select “Display settings.” Here, you can change the display resolution. If icons and text appear too small on a high-resolution monitor, try selecting a lower resolution. Be cautious not to go below 1024×768 to avoid compatibility issues with some software. Also, pay attention to the aspect ratio to ensure the display fits your monitor without black bars. To change the text size, right-click on the Start button, go to “Settings,” type “text size” in the search bar, and select “Text size.” In the “Accessibility” settings, you’ll find a slider to adjust the text size. Drag the slider to make the text larger or smaller and click “Apply.” Be mindful that making the text too large might cause layout issues in some applications. You can also adjust the mouse cursor size in the Control Panel (search for “Control Panel” in the Start Menu, go to “Mouse,” then the “Pointers” tab, and choose a larger scheme under “Scheme”). In the Control Panel’s “Ease of Access” settings (or by searching for “make the mouse easier to use”), you can also enable features like showing the location of the pointer when you press the Ctrl key.

Windows 11 Basics: A User’s Guide

Let’s discuss some Windows 11 basics based on the information in the source.

When you first encounter Windows 11, the bar at the bottom of your screen is called the taskbar. Several elements reside on the taskbar, with the most crucial being the start button, which is the four-square window icon. Unlike previous Windows versions where the start button was on the far left, in Windows 11, the far left is occupied by the widgets area, and the start button is located more towards the center.

Clicking the start button reveals a view of pinned apps, which are applications set into the default start area. You might see multiple pages of these pinned icons, indicated by dots or arrows that allow you to navigate between the pages. Below the pinned apps, you’ll find the recommended section, displaying recently opened files and folders, as well as recently installed applications.

To access all your installed apps, you need to click the button in the top right corner of the start menu. This will present a full list of apps and their icons. Some apps might be organized within folders, requiring you to click on the folder to see its contents. To quickly navigate this list, you can click on any letter, and it will highlight the sections of the alphabet that contain content.

You can customize the start menu by right-clicking on an app in the ‘all apps’ list and choosing ‘Pin to Start’. If an app is already pinned, the option will be ‘Unpin from Start’. Pinned items generally appear at the bottom of the pinned apps view. Remember that opening a program from the start menu requires a single click.

The taskbar itself also contains other icons by default. You can unpin these icons by right-clicking on them and selecting ‘Unpin from taskbar’. Similarly, you can pin applications to the taskbar by right-clicking on them in the start menu (either pinned or in the ‘all apps’ list) and choosing ‘Pin to taskbar’. Opening an application from the taskbar also requires a single click. Be mindful of this, as double-clicking can lead to opening multiple instances of the same application.

On the far right of the taskbar, you’ll typically find a small up arrow that, when clicked, reveals a hidden area for background applications’ icons, such as Windows Security (the built-in antivirus). To the left of the time, you’ll see more visible icons, which might include Microsoft OneDrive for cloud file synchronization, language settings, the network icon indicating your internet connection status, and the volume icon for adjusting the system volume. Clicking on the network or volume icon often brings up a small panel where you can manage your network connection, volume, and access other settings like Night Light.

Next to the time and date is the notification area, indicated by a little bell. Notifications from Windows and some applications will appear here and might also pop up in the lower right corner of the screen. Be cautious of notifications that create a sense of urgency, as they could be part of scams.

The area above the taskbar is the desktop, where your desktop wallpaper is displayed and where you can place icons for frequently used software, utilities, files, and folders. Opening items on the desktop typically requires a double click.

You can customize the taskbar by right-clicking on it and selecting ‘Taskbar settings’. Here, you can toggle the visibility of elements like the search bar, Co-pilot (which is in preview and might be best turned off initially), widgets, and the task view button. Task view, when enabled, allows you to see all your open windows at a glance and switch between them.

In the taskbar settings, under ‘Taskbar behaviors’, you can change the taskbar alignment to move the start button back to the left, a familiar location for users of older Windows versions. Another useful setting here is ‘Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels’. By default, Windows 11 combines multiple windows of the same application into a single icon. You can change this to ‘Never’ or ‘When taskbar is full’ to see individual icons with labels, making it easier to identify specific open windows.

On the desktop, right-clicking provides a context menu with options. In Windows 11, this menu initially shows icons for common actions like cut, copy, rename, share, and delete. If you prefer the classic right-click menu with full text options, you can often find an option like ‘Show more options’. You can rename desktop icons and delete them. Deleted items are moved to the Recycle Bin, which is usually located in the top left corner of the desktop. You can restore deleted items from the Recycle Bin by right-clicking on them and choosing ‘Restore’.

To access the internet, the default browser in Windows 11 is Microsoft Edge, which is typically pinned to the taskbar. The first time you open Edge, you will be presented with several setup screens asking about data syncing, importing data, and tracking. For a basic setup, you might choose to start without your data, decline data synchronization, and opt not to allow Microsoft to track your browsing. The default homepage for Edge is usually the Microsoft Bing page. You can navigate to other websites by typing the address in the address bar at the top. You can open new tabs using the plus sign and close tabs with the ‘X’. You can also open a link in a new tab by right-clicking on it. The three dots menu in Edge provides access to various settings, including the option to hide the sidebar and to change the default search engine used in the address bar (e.g., from Bing to Google).

The main Windows 11 settings can be accessed by right-clicking on the start button and selecting ‘Settings’. The settings are organized into different categories. Windows Update allows you to check for and install updates for Windows and other Microsoft products, including optional driver and Net Framework updates. It’s generally a good idea to keep your system updated. Personalization settings let you change the background wallpaper, colors, and themes, including high contrast themes for accessibility. You can choose a picture, solid color, slideshow, or Windows Spotlight as your background and adjust how the picture fits the screen.

The older Control Panel is still available in Windows 11. You can access it by clicking the start button and typing ‘control’. In the Control Panel, you can switch to a small icon view for easier navigation. Some useful settings within the Control Panel include:

Mouse: Here, you can adjust the double-click speed (slowing it down can be helpful for users who struggle with fast double-clicks) and change the pointer size and options, such as showing the pointer location when you press the Ctrl key.
Power Options: You can manage your power plans and configure when the display turns off and when the computer goes to sleep. On laptops, you’ll have separate settings for battery and plugged-in power.
Programs and Features: This lists many of the traditionally installed software programs, allowing you to uninstall them. Note that some modern apps are managed separately through the start menu.
Devices and Printers: This area, which now redirects to the modern Settings app, shows your installed printers and scanners.
Date and Time: You can adjust the system date, time, and time zone here. It’s often a good idea to set the correct time zone first.

Cut, copy, and paste are fundamental concepts in Windows for moving and duplicating text and files. You can perform these actions by right-clicking and selecting the appropriate option (icons in Windows 11’s initial right-click menu, full text options under ‘Show more options’) or by using keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+X (cut), Ctrl+C (copy), and Ctrl+V (paste). When you cut or copy an item, it is temporarily stored in the clipboard. The clipboard usually holds only the last item you cut or copied. You can use these commands with text in applications like Notepad and with files and folders in File Explorer.

File Explorer is the tool you use to manage your files and folders. You can adjust the width of the left-hand navigation pane by dragging the vertical line. By default, File Explorer shows the file type, but it’s helpful to enable file name extensions by going to View > Show > File name extensions. This will display the full file name, including extensions like ‘.exe’, ‘.jpg’, ‘.png’, making it easier to identify file types.

In File Explorer’s options (accessed via the three-dot menu > Options), under the View tab, you can select ‘Expand to open folder’. This setting, when working correctly, should cause the left-hand navigation pane to automatically expand and highlight the folder you are currently viewing, providing a clear visual representation of your location within the file system. However, the source mentions a potential bug where this might not always work as expected after a recent update.

File Explorer offers different views for your files and folders (accessed via the down arrow on the ‘View’ option), including extra large icons, large icons, small icons, list, and details. The details view, which is often preferred, shows the file name, date modified, type, and size. You can sort the files by clicking on these column headers.

The left-hand pane of File Explorer displays the folder structure. You can expand or collapse folders by clicking the arrows next to them. To organize your files, you can create new folders within existing ones by right-clicking in the right-hand pane and selecting ‘New > Folder’ or by clicking ‘New folder’ in the upper left. You can then drag and drop files into these folders to create a logical structure. You can also create new files, like text documents, by right-clicking and selecting ‘New’. The breadcrumb bar at the top of File Explorer shows your current location and allows you to navigate back up the folder hierarchy.

Right-clicking is a context-sensitive action in Windows. The menu that appears depends on what you click on. Experimenting with right-clicking on different elements like files, the taskbar, icons in the system tray, the start button, and the desktop can reveal various options and shortcuts. For example, right-clicking on the desktop allows you to access Display settings and Personalize.

In Display settings (accessed via right-click on the desktop > Display settings), you can adjust the display resolution. On high-resolution monitors, the default resolution might make icons and text appear very small. Lowering the resolution can make everything larger and more accessible. However, it’s advised not to go below a resolution of 768 in the vertical dimension to avoid compatibility issues with some software. Also, be mindful of the aspect ratio when choosing a resolution to avoid black bars on the sides of your screen.

For further visual adjustments, you can change the text size in Windows 11. To do this, search for ‘text size’ in the settings app (Windows key + I, then type ‘text size’) and go to the Accessibility > Text size area. A slider allows you to increase or decrease the text size, with a preview of how it will look. Be cautious not to make the text too large, as it might not fit properly within some application interfaces.

Windows 11 Start Button Functionality

The Start button in Windows 11 is represented by a little Four Square window icon located on the taskbar. Unlike previous versions of Windows where the Start button was always on the far left, in Windows 11, the far left of the taskbar is occupied by the widget area, and the Start button is positioned to its right.

Clicking the Start button reveals several key areas:

Pinned Apps: This is the default view upon clicking the Start button, displaying a set of applications that have been set into this area for quick access. There can be multiple pages of pinned icons, indicated by little dots at the bottom, allowing you to navigate between these pages.
Recommended: Below the pinned apps, this section displays recent files and folders that you have opened. It also shows recently installed applications, making them easier to find. For example, if you installed the Chrome browser, its icon would likely appear under “recommended”.
All Apps: In the top right-hand corner of the Start Menu, there is a button that, when clicked, displays a full list of all installed applications and their icons. Some of these apps may be organized within folders, requiring you to click on the folder to see its contents.
Alphabetical Navigation: Within the “All Apps” list, you can quickly jump to different parts of the alphabet by clicking on any letter. The letters that have associated content are displayed in a highlighted or bold manner.
Pinning and Unpinning: You can customize the pinned apps area by right-clicking on any app in the “All Apps” list and selecting “Pin to Start“. Conversely, if an app is already pinned, right-clicking on it in the Start Menu will give you the option to “Unpin from Start“. Newly pinned items generally appear at the bottom of the pinned apps list.

The Start button also provides access to the power options. By clicking the Start button, you will find a little power icon, which, when clicked, presents options to “Shut down“, “Restart“, or “Sleep” your computer. The source recommends shutting down over using sleep to avoid potential issues with the system not fully awakening. Restarting your computer regularly (e.g., daily or at least weekly) is advised to maintain system stability by releasing memory and resources that programs may hold onto.

In summary, the Start button in Windows 11 serves as a central point for accessing installed applications, recent files, and system power options. It offers a customizable view of frequently used apps through the pinning feature and allows for easy navigation through the entire list of installed software.

Windows 11 Taskbar Customization Guide

The Windows 11 taskbar offers several ways to be customized. You can access these customizations by right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting “Taskbar settings”.

Here are the key areas for taskbar customization discussed in the sources:

Pinning and Unpinning Apps: You can remove default icons from the taskbar that you don’t use by right-clicking on them and selecting “Unpin from taskbar“. Conversely, you can add applications to the taskbar for quick access by clicking on the Start button, finding the desired app in the pinned apps or the “All apps” list, right-clicking on it, and selecting “Pin to taskbar“.
Managing Hidden Icons (System Tray): On the right side of the taskbar, a small up arrow may be present. Clicking this arrow reveals a hidden area for icons of applications running in the background that don’t need constant visual presence. You can interact with these background apps by clicking on their icons in this hidden menu.
Taskbar Settings: The “Taskbar settings” menu provides various options to modify the taskbar’s appearance and behavior:
Search: You can choose to hide the search bar, show only the search icon, or display the full search bar. Even if hidden, the search functionality is still accessible by clicking the Start button and typing in the search bar at the top.
Co-pilot: There is an option to turn off the Co-pilot (preview) feature.
Widgets: You can turn off the widgets that appear on the left side of the taskbar if you are not interested in seeing information like weather updates.
Task View: The Task view button can be turned on or off. When enabled, clicking it shows a list of all currently open windows, allowing you to quickly switch between them.
Taskbar Alignment: You can change the alignment of the taskbar icons and the Start button. By default, they are centered, but you can choose to align them to the left, which is where the Start button was located in older versions of Windows.
Combine Taskbar Buttons and Hide Labels: This setting controls how multiple windows from the same application are displayed on the taskbar.
The default is to “Always, hide labels“, which means multiple instances of an application are grouped under a single icon with a visual cue (like a shadow) indicating multiple windows are open. Hovering over the icon shows previews of the open windows.
You can change this to “Never“, which will display a separate icon with its label for each open window. This takes up more space on the taskbar but allows you to see immediately which windows are open.
The “When taskbar is full” option will show individual icons and labels until the taskbar runs out of space, at which point it will start combining them.

In addition to these settings, you can also directly unpin an application from the taskbar by right-clicking on its icon and selecting “Unpin from taskbar”.

Windows 11 File Explorer Management

File Explorer in Windows 11 provides various tools and features for managing your files and folders. Here’s a discussion of File Explorer management based on the information in the sources:

Accessing File Explorer: While not explicitly stated how to open File Explorer, the source demonstrates its usage by navigating to “downloads”, opening different folders, and accessing the “documents” folder. It can generally be accessed via an icon on the taskbar or through the Start Menu.

Navigating the File System:

File Explorer displays a left-hand pane that shows the folder structure.
Folders can be expanded or collapsed by clicking the arrows next to them. A downward-pointing arrow indicates an expanded folder.
Clicking on a folder in the left-hand pane displays its contents in the main right-hand pane.
The vertical line separating the left and right panes can be dragged to adjust the width and make folder names more readable.
The source mentions a feature “expand to open folder” which, when enabled in the Folder Options (accessed via the hamburger menu -> Options -> View tab), is intended to automatically expand the folder you are currently in within the left-hand navigation pane, providing a constant visual of your current location in the file system. However, the source notes a potential bug where this might not always function as expected.

Viewing Files and Folders:

File Explorer offers different ways to view the files and folders within a selected location, accessible via the View tab in the ribbon. These include:
Extra large icons, Large icons, Small icons.
List view, which shows only the file names without additional details.
Details view, which displays the name, date modified, type, and size of the files and folders. This is the preferred view according to the source.

Sorting Files and Folders:

In Details view, you can sort the displayed items by clicking on any of the column headers (Name, Date modified, Type, Size). Clicking once sorts in ascending order, and clicking again reverses the sort order. This allows you to easily organize files by name, find the most recent files, group files by type, or order them by size.

Showing File Name Extensions:

By default, Windows may hide file name extensions (e.g., .exe, .jpg, .docx). The source strongly recommends showing file name extensions for better clarity about file types. This can be enabled by going to the View tab, clicking on Show, and selecting “File name extensions“. Once enabled, the full file name, including its extension, will be visible (e.g., “Firefox installer.exe”).

Organizing Files and Folders:

You can create new folders within any location in File Explorer. To do this, right-click in an empty area in the right-hand pane and select New > Folder. You can then type a name for the new folder. Alternatively, you can click on New in the upper left corner of the File Explorer window and choose Folder.
You can create a folder structure with main folders and subfolders to better organize your files. Files can be dragged and dropped into these folders from other locations within File Explorer.

Renaming and Deleting Files and Folders:

To rename a file or folder, you can right-click on it. In Windows 11, a context menu with icons will appear. The icon that looks like a file with a pencil is for Rename. Hovering over the icons will also show their function. In older versions of Windows, selecting “Show more options” in the right-click menu would display the classic menu with the full word “Rename”. After clicking the rename option, you can type the new name and press Enter. The source demonstrates renaming an icon on the desktop, and the same principle applies within File Explorer.
To delete a file or folder, you can right-click on it and select the delete icon (which looks like a trash can) from the context menu. Again, selecting “Show more options” might show the full word “Delete” in a classic menu. Deleted files and folders are moved to the Recycle Bin.
You can restore deleted items from the Recycle Bin by opening it (usually found in the top-left corner of the desktop by default), right-clicking on the desired item, and selecting “Restore“.

Cut, Copy, and Paste:

File Explorer supports the cut, copy, and paste operations for managing files and folders.
Cut (Ctrl+X or right-click and select the scissors icon or “Cut” under “Show more options”) removes the selected item from its current location and places it on the clipboard.
Copy (Ctrl+C or right-click and select the two overlapping rectangles icon or “Copy” under “Show more options”) duplicates the selected item and places the copy on the clipboard, while the original remains in its location.
Paste (Ctrl+V or right-click in the destination location and select the clipboard icon or “Paste” under “Show more options”) inserts the item from the clipboard into the current location.
The clipboard temporarily holds only the last item that was cut or copied.

These features within File Explorer enable you to effectively navigate, organize, and manage your files and folders in Windows 11.

Windows 11: Cut, Copy, and Paste Essentials

The concepts of cut, copy, and paste are fundamental for managing information within Windows 11, whether it be text, files, or folders. These actions allow you to move or duplicate data between different locations or applications.

How Cut, Copy, and Paste Work:

Cut: The cut operation (Ctrl+X or right-click and select the scissors icon or “Cut” under “Show more options”) removes the selected item from its original location and places it temporarily on the clipboard. Think of it like physically cutting something out.
Copy: The copy operation (Ctrl+C or right-click and select the two overlapping rectangles icon or “Copy” under “Show more options”) creates a duplicate of the selected item and places this copy on the clipboard, while the original item remains in its place.
Paste: The paste operation (Ctrl+V or right-click in the destination location and select the clipboard icon or “Paste” under “Show more options”) inserts the item currently stored on the clipboard into the new location.

The Clipboard:

The clipboard is a temporary storage area in your computer’s memory. When you cut or copy an item, it is stored in the clipboard. By default, the clipboard can hold only one item at a time. If you cut or copy something new, it replaces the previous content of the clipboard. When you paste, you are inserting the last item that was cut or copied.

Using Cut, Copy, and Paste with Text:

The source demonstrates these actions within Notepad, a basic text editor.

Select the text you want to cut or copy by clicking and dragging your mouse over it.
To cut: Right-click on the selected text and choose cut (or press Ctrl+X). The text will disappear from its original location and be placed on the clipboard.
To copy: Right-click on the selected text and choose copy (or press Ctrl+C). The text will remain in its original location, and a copy will be placed on the clipboard.
To paste: Position your cursor where you want the text to appear, right-click, and choose paste (or press Ctrl+V). The text from the clipboard will be inserted at the cursor’s location.

Using Cut, Copy, and Paste with Files and Folders:

You can also use these operations to manage files and folders within File Explorer, as discussed in our previous turn.

Select the file or folder you want to cut or copy.
To cut: Right-click on the selected file or folder and choose the scissors icon (or select “Cut” under “Show more options”). The item will be removed from its current location.
To copy: Right-click on the selected file or folder and choose the two overlapping rectangles icon (or select “Copy” under “Show more options”). The original item will remain.
Navigate to the destination folder where you want to move or duplicate the item.
To paste: Right-click in an empty area within the destination folder and choose the clipboard icon (or select “Paste” under “Show more options”). The cut or copied item will now appear in the destination.

The source emphasizes that the concept of cut, copy, and paste is a fundamental skill in Windows and is consistent across various applications, including text editors, file managers, and even within applications like Microsoft Excel for manipulating cells in a spreadsheet. You can use either the right-click menus or the keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) to perform these actions.

✔️ How to Use Windows 11 – Basics Tutorial for Beginners – Computer Guide for Dummies

The Original Text

welcome to Windows 11 the first thing you need to do is get oriented so what are you looking at here this bar along the bottom is called the taskbar and on the taskar there are a variety of elements uh the most important of which is this icon right here the little uh Four Square window icon and that is your start button so start button on all other versions of Windows prior to Windows 11 was always on the far left right now the far left is taken up by this little widget area all right but start button right here now when you click on your start button you get a view of a bunch of pinned apps which means uh just things that have been set into the uh default start area here right in front of you when you click on the button and if you’ll notice these two little dots there’s a couple of pages of pinned icons right so you can move between those pages by clicking on the dots or clicking on the little arrow to go to the next one so if you have a lot of pinned items you might have five pages right that kind of thing underneath recommended you’re going to see uh recent files and folders that you’ve opened right this is a new installation here so nothing’s been opened uh there’s just the get started welcome to Windows thing but uh recent files and folders and if you’ve recently installed something uh generally the icon will show up here so if you installed the Chrome browser for example you would see the Chrome uh browser icon under recommended that makes it easier to find uh you know what you’ve recently taken action on all right now if you want to see all your apps you have to go to this little button right here in the top right hand corner and when you click there you get the full list of installed apps and all their little icons now some of them like here for example you have little yellow folder symbol uh it you actually have to click on the folder and then you get uh the full set of icons in that folder right so a lot of them aren’t in folders uh but some of them are right and uh things that you should know about these little icons are that if you’re trying to search for something that’s you know way down in a further letter you don’t want to scroll scroll scroll right you can uh click on any of the letters you know here we click on G for example and it’ll show you a highlighted map of which letters have uh content right so anything in the Bold like our for example here brings us back to that folder that uh we looked at earlier uh so again any letter and you can jump anywhere in the alphabet and you know get more quickly to what you want to see the other thing is that if you have something that you uh like to run into or open up a lot uh you can right click on it and say pin to start or if it’s already in start uh unpin from start so what that means of course is that when we click on start here that was paint right so here we already have uh the paint icon but if it was out say if I unpin it here and then I go back into all apps and then click on any letter go to P there’s our paint rightclick I can pin to start and then it will show back up but generally at the bottom yeah it it’ll become the last item all right so that’s a quick view of this area for getting into programs and you just click once on any of these icons to open that actual program or app they call the maps these days uh which is different from the desktop over here if you wanted to open Firefox Firefox from the desktop you’d have to double click so double click on it from the desktop single click from start and single click when you’re looking at uh clicking on an icon in the taskbar right A lot of people get confused about that and say they’ll click twice here on Microsoft Edge and actually open two copies of it right so because they’re used to you know in older versions of Windows almost everything was double clicked open right so a lot of things now are single click so try and keep that in mind uh and that’s almost certainly what’s happening if you open two things at once when you meant to open one you’re double clicking when you should have single clicked now also in your start button is your power button so uh that’s pretty critical to know a lot of people can’t figure out immediately how to shut down their system right so when you’re done with Windows for the day you can click on the start button click on this little power icon and then click shut down I recommend shutting down over sleep uh you know generally speaking because Microsoft has never seemed to get sleep right in terms of uh you know I do it stuff right so I often have people call me up and say this isn’t working that’s not working and what’s happened is their computer’s gone to sleep but when it’s uh awakened not all of it has awakened so their say their network card didn’t wake up properly and now they can’t get online until they restart their computer computer and everything gets refreshed so and that’s another thing that you should know okay so you’ve got your little power button you know aside from shutting down restarting is often uh something that you should do particularly if you if you like to leave your computer on all the time which is something that I tend to do myself uh but you shouldn’t let a computer run say for 30 days without restarting it because what happens is programs take up pits of memory and resources and they don’t always release them and then your computer has less and less and less to work with and it’s kind of like uh you know going crazy you your your mind is getting smaller and smaller until the system starts acting really weird and uh the cure for that so often just restart your computer so I tend to restart mine at least once a day just you know as I’m leaving for lunch or something just hit the restart and then so by the time I come back it’s all up and ready to go again of course uh you don’t have to every single day I’m not saying that it’s a hard and fast rule if you’ve got a lot of things open and you you know restarting would interrupt your workflow you know let it ride but don’t let it go for more than a week uh if you want uh to keep things stable all right so that is the start button um these other icons on the taskbar here are the default ones at least for my uh region here and you can you can change these and clean these up right so for example I don’t use the Microsoft store uh very often so I would rightclick and say unpin from taskbar right and uh I don’t use Microsoft teams much so I would right click and say unpin from taskbar but if we wanted to put something on the taskbar we could click on start and see a lot of people like uh to play solitire and that would be something they’d want down there so we could rightclick and we can say pin to taskar so so just as you can pin things into the start area you can pin and unpin things from the taskbar itself so uh moving on down the line into the right hand side of the taskbar uh first thing we come across is this little up Arrow here if you click on that and you may not have one depending on how many icons you have at play but uh what this is is like an area where they hide icons that are just for things that are just running in the background that don’t necessarily always need to be visually in front of you but need to be available so for example this here is Windows security which is the built-in antivirus for Microsoft Windows so I can click on that little up arrow click on that icon and then it brings me my security add glance here right so I can expand that and uh when you have these little triangles with the exclamation point here it’s it’s giving you uh hints warnings advice that kind of thing so uh you know you can read the notices and see whether you want to act on that right I won’t go into all of the details of the security right now but what I would say is generally speaking you don’t really need to buy something like Norton Antivirus or maffy or what have you uh you know they do have the built-in Antivirus for Windows and generally speaking it it’s pretty good it’s not the best out there but uh in some ways it is just because uh you know say for example maafi is just going to keep trying to sell you more and more and more security it’s like uh you know if You’ got a a club and you need a bouncer at the door you know one bouncer is going to generally be fine right you don’t need seven bouncers they’re just going to block the door and slow things down and maybe scare away customers right so uh if that analogy works for you I don’t know but it’s kind of how I feel about you know third party companies coming in and and trying to oversell security to you right so now things that aren’t in this little hidden menu are the more visible icons that we see to the left of the uh time and here so uh one of these is Microsoft One Drive which is uh kind of like a cloud offering for sharing files and between your different systems so say if you have a laptop and you have a desktop and you have your one Drive account so you can use one drive to synchronize your documents and pictures and music and stuff between those two computers so there’s there there’s uh everything’s going to be save to the cloud and then whenever you change something it gets updated in the cloud and when you whenever you go to the other computer and turn it on it’s going to download all the changes so so that if you’re working on a book for example on your desktop you know you’ve gotten up to chapter 3 you go over to your laptop you turn it on it synchronizes you’ve got chapter 3 on your laptop without having to run around with you know a USB stick or a CD or whatever so uh you know that that’s that thing and here is our little language area so you know I’m in Canada uh the default language for PCs is the US and so I have those two languages you may have more but uh this is how You’ switch uh with your mes between languages right and then we have our little Network icon which tells us uh you know whether we’re online or offline or whatever this is a wired network uh you may have a wireless bit there but when you when you click on that you see how these two both these icons get highlighted when I click so the next one over is volume right uh so whether I click on volume or network I get this little uh area here that pops up and you know I can I can change my um volume by using this slider here and then uh you know depending on uh what kind of network you’re on if it if there if this was a Wi-Fi network for example it might have airplane mode you know or this kind of thing going on and you can change other things here like accessibility settings and you know whether you want your screen to uh I think it could cut back on Blue Light the Night Light thing right uh so that uh it doesn’t interfere with your sleep as things go later in the day you can change the way the light comes off your monitor and and make things healthier for you that kind of thing so so this is it’s kind of like another widget area you know uh but more technical than the one on the left hand side here and of course here we have our time and date and right next to that we have a little notification area that little bell here right now uh do not disturb is on um but you know if if that was on we might see a few notifications from Windows about things that have been happen happening recently Etc and notifications do pop up just like this in the lower right hand corner so if the system has something to say to you generally speaking uh something will pop up in the lower right but be careful because uh people can also get uh notifications from websites and other third parties uh generally through uh giving them permission when you’re using your browser and uh those third part parties often try to imitate your system and you know for example pretend that you’ve got a virus and that you have to take action right away and basically I’m saying be wary of scams and stuff right so so be careful uh what you click on and what you react to and you know I guess generally speaking the way scams tend to work is that uh they they give such a sense of urgency like you have to act now without thinking right and usually your system won’t treat you quite that roughly so so that’s one way to kind of tell the difference between the two so uh you know that’s a quick overview of the taskbar above the taskbar is what we just generally call the desktop right and uh this is the picture here is your desktop wallpaper right which can be changed and then of course you have all your icons on your desktop for uh different software and utilties and stuff and this whole list can change and if you’ve been working on your computer for a while it basically fill up your whole screen with these kinds of things so you get files and folders and and icons to programs and stuff so uh now if you want to do some uh tweaking of your taskbar you can right click on it and click on taskbar settings all right and the first area here let’s expand this can maximize it with that middle button so so we can quickly go over that so every window in Windows generally speaking uh there there’s going to be a few exceptions where you only see the X right but uh you’re going to have the X here which will close the window you’re going to have this icon which you can use to maximize or restore right and then you see if you hover over it you get these uh little options so if I wanted to put it on the right hand side of the screen we can do that right or um if uh you know we wanted top right corner like so all right and uh but if you just click on it once you’re going to get the maximize right which is what we were after in the first place and the one here this is just minimize so if you click on the little dashed line there it’ll shrink down just to the tab bar and you see that it has this little dott under it showing that it’s it’s running right it’s it’s open but not visible so we can click back on that to uh restore it to whatever size it was before it was minimized so anyway this is the settings for the taskbar and you can actually turn things off like so if you don’t use your search you can turn that off you can say you know hide search and it’ll disappear or if you don’t want it to be so big you can put search icon only and then you you’d have to click on the icon before you put in any search um one thing I would just tell you is that if you hide it uh you save all that space and you still have that search functionality if you click on start and you click up on the the search bar at the top you’re going to get the the same kind of uh functionality right so not necessarily necessary but uh you know we’ll put it back to the default so that things look familiar now co-pilot is is something that’s in preview uh I would just turn that off for the moment um myself because um you know I I generally don’t like to play with things that are in beta mode right um and we have other things that we can turn off like we could turn off the widgets in the left if you’re not interested in and seeing the weather and the you know currency conversion rates and stuff showing up on your computer Compu all the time and uh also there’s this little um task view button here that we can turn on and off and I’ll show you what that is so save right now we have the taskbar settings open and if I open say file explorer here now we have two different windows open if I click on task view then it shows me a list of all the windows that are open so if I had 12 things open I’d have 12 little squares here and then you can you see the little preview and then you can quickly switch between them right so I’ve pulled up my file explorer if I go back to task view here and click on settings then I bring settings to the front right so uh we’ll close file explorer here for the moment so so if you use that you could leave it on again if you don’t save a bit of room and turn it off all right and uh another thing that a lot of people really appreciate because they’re used to older versions of Windows is you know uh hide your widgets right and then come down to the bottom here where it says taskbar behaviors right and click the little arrow pointing down there and then it has taskar alignment and you can choose to place the start button back on the left where your brain expects it to be right and another thing that I would say is very useful here where it says combine taskbar buttons and hide labels right so generally by default it’s on to always do that and and what that means is that say here again if we open File Explorer I can open another File Explorer by uh right clicking and clicking on file explorer again and then I say I can do that a third time and you see we still only have the one icon although it has that little uh shadow of or visible edge of something behind it to show that there are some stacked and if you want to move between the three uh windows that you have open if you hover over that icon you see the three different uh panels that you you can just choose between them now so if you know let’s go to the desktop here and this one was on let’s go to music here and let let’s put this one to pictures right so we’re in these three different folders now if we go if we go back to our settings and we switch this to uh never for example now instead of that layered File Explorer icon which visually doesn’t give you a lot of information now it actually shows me that I’m in pictures music and desktop takes a bit more room on your taskbar but you can actually see immediately what it is and then you can just go up I want to go back to my desktop I want to go back to my pictures I want to go back to my music so that’s why I would say uh you know if you follow my personal preference either choose never or uh when taskbar is full which would mean that it’ll it’ll show you the bigger bits until you fill up the taskbar and then it’ll start layering things all right so um you know your choice I’m going to stick it back on the default uh for the the moment but uh you know if it was my system I would put put it on never right let’s close these guys off now so that’s an overview of the the uh basic visuals right now if we wanted to delete an icon or rename an icon on the desktop we would rightclick and we get this menu here and this is different than earlier versions of Windows where say uh if we had uh right clicked well actually what we would see I can show you what we would normally see if I click on show more options now I’m going to get that classic uh rightclick menu uh where I have you know rename for example is spelled out for us right but now in Windows 11 if I rightclick I get this little icon for renaming right so a lot of the basic most common functions the the the the full typed name has been replaced by these little things so here’s if you hover over it shows you what it is here’s cut right copy rename share and delete right so if I wanted to just take the x64 off of Reaper here I could delete that and hit enter it wants admin permission I’m going to say go ahead and continue so I’ve renamed that icon I can also right click cck and delete it right and then a handy thing to know is that if you delete something it’s going to go into your recycle bin right so we open up the recycle bin which by default is going to be tucked away here in the top leftand corner of your desktop we can find the file in the recycle bin right click on it and click on restore it wants to confirm that we click on continue and and there it is back on our desktop now one of the most common things that you’re going to want to do on your windows 11 PC is Jump onto the internet and to do so in the normal case you’re going to use Microsoft Edge which we have down here on the taskbar you can install Firefox or Chrome or any other browser but uh you know if you’re new to Windows you probably haven’t done that and you’re going to need to start with Microsoft Edge now the warning is is that the first time that you open Microsoft Edge Microsoft is going to hit you with a number of questions and offers and it’s going to be quite confusing just to get to the point where you’re actually online and can do something so let me walk you through that process here so we’re going to click on edge and this is the first time it’s sprun so you know welcome to Microsoft Edge and it’s going to ask you if you want to sign in to sync data right so syncing data is a kind of an advanced thing where if you have a desktop and a laptop you work computer you can sign in with your the same Microsoft account and your your settings like your favorites and you know your your site history search history that kind of thing will be synchronized across the computer so so that your experience on each computer is uh standardized and very similar right but you know we’re beginners here so we’re going to say start without your data right now it’s going to ask you know you always want to have access to your recent browsing data right typically I like to say no to most of these offers so you know the less tracking that Microsoft does or that any third party does uh you know the less your computer has to do and the less there is to go wrong and the less other people know about every little thing that you’re doing of course so I’m going to say don’t allow and confirm and continue right and then here they’re offering to import data from elsewhere again you know let’s forego the data synchronization stuff say continue without this data and then uh Microsoft wants to track everything you do so that they can see you know how you work and how other people work and then based on that information ostensibly you know make their offerings more useful and targeted to their customers again let’s reduce the complexity and the flow of data going to say don’t allow and say confirm and start browsing so you think that means start browsing but not quite yet right so here we have uh they’re offering different themes right so you know there’s different colors Etc if you’re into having you know public G browser or whatever go ahead and click on one of those but um basically I would just click finish here now we’re actually on the web all right so the the default uh homepage is uh the Microsoft Bing uh homepage right uh here they’re asking questions you can close these little popups in the right hand bottom right hand corner can be quite annoying anyway so here we go we’re online if you want to go to a particular website like for example if you want uh instead of searching the web with Bing if you want to go to Google you can click in the address bar at the top here and type in google.com or whichever oneca whichever you use and you get to that site they have their own offerings right so we can say stay signed out right there’s there’s different tabs right so here’s here’s another tab uh which is just a welcome to Microsoft Edge tab that automatically opened right we can close that by hitting the little X but if we wanted to open our own extra tab there’s there’s a little plus sign right here we can open that up and we have a whole new page so say if I went to Google on both tabs and here on this tab you know we can search for pigs and on this tab we can search for ducks all right you don’t stay signed out there ah sport Ducks I was thinking the animal but there you go so then you can move between the two tabs you can even reorder the tabs you know drag one over and and put them in order so in this way uh if you’re doing a bit of research on something and you know for example you’re looking at real estate you can open several tabs and and kind of keep track of the properties you’re interested in ETC so uh one thing also to know is that you know instead of doing a search and going through the whole trying to find a page once you open a new tab uh when you are on a tab say if we’re looking at uh the links here and you say okay well the Wikipedia article would be interesting you can right click and say open link in new tab and it’ll open in a new tab right next to the one that you’re on right and then you can keep going down and go oh National Geographic Kids has something right right click opening a new tab so now we have you know these two articles on pigs that we can refer to and of course you can you can just keep going and have a whole bunch of tabs open and uh you know be able to move freely between them all right and uh the other thing to know about Edge that would be most significant I would say is that this these three little dots here is the menu for all kinds of things right and that’s standard on Windows these days and even on the web you’ll probably have noticed that these little uh uh three dot I think they call them hamburger menus but anyway uh those are the menus that get you into all the extra functionality right so for example if we click on those dots and we click on settings we get a whole area here where we can tweak things so for example Edge has this sidebar here which uh you may just find distracting as a beginner so you could click on sidebar here and just say uncheck always show sidebar right and then voila it disappears right and say if we want to go to a particular setting we can say type in Search and it will give us the different elements that are relevant to search right and if we look for our default say address bar and search right down here near the bottom if we click on that we can say which search engines we want to use by default when we search from the address bar so right now of course on a Microsoft system it’s Microsoft Bing but we could switch that to Google right and now if we go and we just go to the address bar and we type in save horses we get a Google result right so it’s a quick way to uh enable your favorite default search engine speaking of settings if you want to jump into the settings area for Windows 11 itself right click on the start button and then click on settings right we can maximize that right we have all these different categories where we can jump in and tweak things right so for example Windows update if you click on that you can click on check for updates and windows will you know reach out to Microsoft and see what updates for Windows there happen to be uh there’s some Advanced options for that if we clicked on that uh we can click on this is usually off by default I tend to turn it on receive updates for other Microsoft products like Microsoft Office or whatever and uh also I like to be notified whenever restart is required that’s usually off I turn that on all right and uh and here’s an interesting area so uh you know if you noticed when we were on just the plain Windows update thing just says you’re up to date right but if when we go into advanced options we go down to optional updates there’s two available all right so if we click on that we get these different categories driver updates and other updates under driver updates we have a display update for this system and other under other updates we have a Net Framework update right so if you find that your system is uh acting a little unstable or if you just like to know that everything is as up to date as it can be you can pop into this area select those updates and click download and install right and once you click on that it’ll bring you back to the main Windows update uh area and you’ll see that the updates are downloading now generally speaking when uh updates are running you can go ahead and do other things you know we could close this off and just do other things well updates are running and eventually you’ll get a notification in the bottom right saying that the computer would like to restart you don’t have to restart right away uh you know if you’re writing out something a letter an email or you know reviewing do something online uh you could wait but uh ultimately you’ll want to restart to finish the update uh you saw the screen go black there that’s because one of the updates was for the display and it’s not unusual for the display to uh jump around while the video uh display driver is being updated so now those updates are complete and we can look around at some of the other offerings here uh one you might want to jump into right away if you like things to look the way you like them to look is personalization right and here is where you can change background and colors and themes Etc so if we click on background you know we have the default Windows 11 swirly here is is uh what we’ve been looking at so far uh this is a relatively nice one uh I minimize this to show you what that looks like one of the reasons I like this one is that uh it’s it’s mostly dark and the icons on the desktop that show up with their names nice and cleanly against that darker background all right uh this one looks fairly interesting as well uh it looks like colorful potato chips to me anyway so um let’s just switch back to what we’ve been looking at so that’s with the picture background but you could also just choose a solid color for for example right so uh black is the default choice for that uh which would just give us uh a nice clean black screen with that high contrast uh for icons and stuff if I don’t have a picture this is the color I would prefer on my system right and uh other than that uh it’s a bit more advanced I won’t get into it right now but you can set up a slideshow or you can uh let Microsoft put things all over your desktop by choosing Windows Spotlight all right but we’ll go back and just put it back to picture and the other thing that you should know about when you have a picture as a background is you’ve got these fill options right uh how it’s going to I should say fit options the option chosen here is fill but uh if you’re going to fill the screen then there’s going to be no uh no edges visible like like if the aspect ratio is different than your monitor uh you know whichever side needs to stretch out to fill the screen is going to stretch out and then some of the image might be cropped up if you choose fit then the whole image will fit but then you might have uh you know black or other colored bars on either side or on the top and bottom because of the different aspect ratio for the image uh versus the Monitor uh then we have stretch which would uh just stretch the image to exactly fit your monitor uh but could distort it if the aspect ratio is off uh there’s also tile so say if you had a small square image of uh you know whatever a cookie and you had uh it could tile you know so many times across and so many times up and down you’d have so many cookies right and of course we have Center which is just put it in the center of your screen at its natural size so if it’s a tiny picture you would have a tiny picture in the center of the screen if it was a huge picture of uh like a dartboard and you know you might only see the bullseye on the dartboard all right and uh we have span which I’m not sure how that differs from the others but you could always click on it and find out if you’re playing with a picture of your own on the desktop and then we also have uh different themes now here we have what they call contrast themes right and these are for those who are visually impaired or just prefer things to be uh very Stark so you know if we if we click on one of these choose one of these here’s the samples here if we choose one of these from the drop-down say Aquatic and we choose apply then you get immediately a view of how that’s going to look uh on your system right and this desert is the next one here right there’s another option we have dusk we have night sky and of course we can switch it back to none all right so uh those are what we would call accessibility themes generally speaking and then under related settings here we have themes which is uh a of more uh usual themes not so high contrast and uh I won’t preview all of those but uh there’s a bunch on offer here and you can also click on browse themes to get an even larger list now that was the new windows 11 settings area if you’re used to the old windows settings area which is the control panel that is still available so you can click on the start button but and type in the word control and you’ll see the control panel come up as an offering if you click on that your control panel will pop up and we can maximize that I like to switch from category view to the small icon view right and then in here you can play with all kinds of things right so uh one thing that I like to do on every new system is click on Mouse right and then here under double click speed I pull that all the way to the left so that it’s slow because the issue there is that uh when it’s in the middle you have to click so fast to get you know this is where you can test your double clicking is open it close it right uh you have to click so fast that uh well some people simply can’t do it right so they’ll they’ll be clicking and clicking and trying to open something like on the desktop you have to double click on an icon to open a program and uh it just won’t it won’t work for them you know nine times out of 10 or whatever but if I pull that all the way to the left suddenly you know they can click click make a double click at that speed and it will work all right so fairly important U even if you don’t need it to be uh slower if you ever share your computer it’ll reduce frustration for somebody else I’m sure so uh the other bit in here is pointers uh for the mouse and you can see the size note the size of the little arrow here that I’ve been using the default size uh if we click on the drop down here I like to go down to Windows standard extra large right and then you see uh here a preview of what that’s going to give us and then this one that we’ve been using so it’s twice as big right so I can click apply and then now I have that nice large cursor or arrow and if we go to pointer options right uh we have the pointer speed that we can adjust um generally I don’t find that that needs adjusting but uh sometimes on certain systems with certain mice you know every time you move your mouse a little bit it seems to fly across the screen right if that’s happening to you you can pull that uh to the left generally I wouldn’t pull it all the way to the left because uh you know if we click apply here uh things start to go way too slow right um but uh you know adjust to your taste usually just one tick at a time uh until you fine-tune it uh the way that you want another uh nice option is to click on show location of pointer when I press the control key so uh basically that means that when you press the control key you’ll get this little blip these circles that’ll show you where your mouse is so if you have trouble finding your mouse sometimes on your screen just hit the control key and then you’ll see immediately where it has gone right um other things here I don’t tend to tweak but uh if you use the wheel on your mouse to scroll through things you can adjust how many lines it Scrolls at a time right if you find that it moves too fast you could lower that if you want it to move faster of course you could uh increase that number right and then we click okay and we have our new mouse cursor right and of course here in the uh control panel there’s all kinds of other useful options one is power options right so if we jump in there uh you know there’s generally different Power plans on your system that you can choose m’s on high performance uh at the moment if you want to tweak that or see what the settings actually are you can click on change plan settings and uh you know a typical setting here might be you know to turn off the display every 15 minutes and on high performance to never put the computer to sleep but if if you have a power saving mode it might be uh you know 20 minutes or whatever that it’s going to put the computer to sleep you don’t necessarily want that to happen if uh every time you step away you got to come back and log in and do the whole thing right so uh if you’re like me I like to have uh both of these at never and if if you know I want to save power or whatever I can put my computer to sleep and I can turn off my monitor right so you would hit save changes to save that and if you’re on a laptop you would you would see more options because there’s going to be a battery options versus um you know your plugged-in options and you can you can tweak each of those accordingly on on battery I would recommend uh having your computer go to sleep after a certain time just to conserve the battery and to keep the system from uh just running out of juice and and turning off suddenly uh without because it has no more power uh which is more dangerous and can corrupt your system all right and we can go up at the top here to the breadcrumb back to all control panel items and uh another feature I would point out to you uh right now is programs and features so if we click on that uh it’s going to show us a list of all the programs that are installed on the system now uh that that’s a bit deceptive it’s not all of them it’s all of the standard uh style programs uh that we would traditionally think of as a program uh that’s been set up on a on a system but now there’s a sort of a distinction between programs which are listed here in apps which are things that are uh just access differently by the computer and and you might see under here so for example photos here you know I could rightclick and uninstall photos here from you know the start area but photos is not listed here in in the in the program list right so say if you installed uh Norton Antivirus uh which by the way I don’t recommend Norton Antivirus so you know uh I would I would rather see you use uh something else but um as I mentioned earlier just use the Microsoft One the free one but uh that would be in this list right that’s not an app it’s actually you know full-fledged software so you may need to manage software from here and you may need to manage apps from the start menu all right and we go back to all control panel items uh other bits that would be useful to know devices and printers all right that actually brings you now into the standard settings and then you can see your printers and scanners list uh right now I don’t have any physical devices but we have the Microsoft print to PDF printer there and uh what else would be interesting here you can you know tweak your sound settings uh you can look at your system information right see what kind of computer you have what kind of processor Etc so you have access to that area quickly from here yeah and one more thing would be the date and time um often that’s wrong when you get a new computer and you’re sitting in front of it the time Zone’s wrong or the or the just the time your right time zone but the time is off by a few minutes so you can jump in here and click on change date and time you know tweak the date make sure the the years right right you know you can you can go month by month Etc here and then uh you know go into whichever uh area hour minute second right and you can use the up and down bits to to change the time or or minutes Etc and uh you can also type it in right so you can just type in the number right just cancel that because it’s correct on this system and also you can change your time zone right so um I often find that computers come set up for the wrong time zone so just choose your correct time zone from the drop- down list in fact you may want to do that first change your time zone because that if your if your time is off by you know 3 hours or whatever changing your time zone may just put it right where it needs to be uh otherwise if you’re if you’re messing with this first and then you change your time zone you’re going to have to go back and mess with this again if you know what I mean anyway we can click okay there and that’s a preview of the control panel now an important concept to understand in Windows is cut copy and paste now you can do that with text but you can also do that with files and and folders and other things so uh let me show you what I mean by that so we’re going to click on start and I’m going to type in note and so I can get notepad coming up right and uh notepad is basically a little text editor right very just text there’s no formatting or anything you can’t make things bold or Center them or whatever uh you would use wordpad for that um as a default little app on Windows but I just want to show you some things here so uh this is a sentence this is a note this is the oops and there we go okay so uh you can select things by clicking you hold down your mouse and draging right so I have selected this whole sentence now if I want to move that sentence I can rightclick and I can say cut all right and then I place my cursor wherever I want the sentence to now appear I rightclick and I choose paste so I cut it and I’ve pasted it so those words are are literally from pre-computer days when you would cut something out of a page and paste it onto another page if you’re moving paragraphs or sentences around right so uh now there’s also copy and paste right so if I select this sentence here right click and instead of choosing cut I choose copy then I can place my cursor where I want it right click and paste and now I get a copy of it right so the way that this works is that there’s there’s something called the clipboard there a little area of memory when you when you cut something it goes into the clipboard and it’s removed from where it initially was when you copy something it’s put into the clipboard but it stays where it originally was right so now it’s in the clipboard the clipboard uh unless you get a clipboard utility uh is is by default it’s just going to hold one item right so if I copy one thing and then I copy another the another thing is in the clipboard not the first thing right so so when I paste I’m only going to get the last thing that I cut or I copied right so uh keep that in mind right and uh that’s just with text right so we can close that off there and I can show you that this is also possible to do with files so if I go into downloads here I have a list of files I’m going to right click on name at the top and choose size all columns to fit so we can see all the full file names and essentially we can rightclick on a file and uh it’s a little bit different here in terms of uh the rightclick menu that comes up uh different than a notepad right so uh we have little icons for cut and copy as opposed to the words now on older versions of Windows if I click on show more options uh we had cut and copy as menu full menu items not tiny little icons uh but you know they’ve changed the default here so we’re going to rightclick and if I say cut for Chrome setup here and then if I go to my desktop on the left here so here’s my desktop if I right click and now the icon is paste right another little icon to look at you can click on that and you see that that file has been pasted into uh or onto the desktop all right so on the desktop I can right click and I can click on copy right and then say if I go to documents I can rightclick I can choose paste again and now I have a copy of chrome both on the desktop and in documents so you can do that with documents and folders as well uh and you know if you’re in like say Microsoft Excel doing a spreadsheet uh you can copy and paste or cut and paste uh cells in the in the spreadsheet right so the whole idea of cut copy and paste uh Works across all kinds of Vari of Windows and it’s an important skill to have now I’ve been right clicking to uh do the cutting copying and pasting but the default keys for uh those commands are it’s control X for cut so that means hold down your control key and you can you can just keep your finger on it right uh you keep your finger on it for 30 seconds if you like it’s not that’s the timing there isn’t critical the the the critical thing is well you have your finger on that then you tap the X like just like you would be you’re going to type in the letter X in in a letter just hold down the control key tap the X and then let go with the control key all right um so you don’t have to try and hit them both at the same time is what I’m I’m trying to say some people get that impression and and of course it doesn’t always work out and they end up hitting the X before the control and well that doesn’t work so well so hold down the control key tap the X let go of the control key that’s cut right so similar uh copy is contrl c for copy and then uh pasting is contrl V right so uh you know for example if I have now I’ve got my Chrome setup selected in documents I’m going to press controll X right and then if I go over to pictures here and I click on the right so that that’s the active window I go control+ V and then I get my Chrome setup has moved from documents to pictures right and then you know I can rightclick on that and one of the little icons is delete I can delete that and then I can also delete it from my desktop right so uh let’s have another look at the downloads here maximize this and just show you a few things about file explorer right so this is the default view here uh few things you should know is that uh if things aren’t fully readable on the left hand side this vertical line here is movable so if you hover over it in just the right spot you get this little Double Arrow you can click and you can drag to give yourself more or less room all right and then uh another thing is is that we have all of these uh files and it tells us under type what type of file it is right but um what I like to do is click on view View and then go to show and then choose or select file name extensions right and then uh instead of it just saying Firefox installer here now it says Firefox installer.exe right so that’s an executable file I don’t have to look over here to figure out what type of file it is I can see immediately by the extension and this works great for uh pictures so you’ve got a a bunch of pictures in your uh pictures folder and some of them are jpegs some of them are gifts you know some of them are pings so you got you know your jpg extension your GF and your PNG extension um you know a lot of times those things don’t matter but sometimes they really do right uh you know if you’re creating a web page and you want you know a certain kind of optimized image or whatever you know it’s important to know what the extension is so I like to turn that on another thing that I like to turn on uh is uh we go into the little hamburger menu here and we go to options right and click on The View tab if we scroll down to the bottom here I choose expand to open folder right so let me drag the by the way when you click on the title bar of of a window and drag you can move the window around all right so uh I’ve CHS an expand to open folder click okay right and then now when I’m in uh different folders it’s going to expand on the on this edge here on this left side here to show me that folder so right now I’m I’m on edge here if I double click on application to enter this folder it’s going to expand and show me that folder that I’m in so so you’ll always have a a direct visual view of where you are in the structure of your file system um on the leftand side it’ll follow your your movements on the right otherwise uh all of this would have just stayed you know tightly closed like this you’d be you know all the way down here but you wouldn’t have any view of where you were and uh it it’s often the case that when you’re when you’re in one folder then you’re um needing to see and interact with other folders so for example if I wanted to pull this file just up one level then I can see that level immediately here so uh that I find very useful and uh there’s different views here right so if you click on the little uh down arrow on the right there you know we’ve got our extra large icons all right your large icon view your small icon view all right and we got a list view which is just the file name and no no additional information right and then the one I tend to like is the details view here so that gives you the name the date modified the type and the size right and you can you can click on any of these headings to sort by that bit right so now I’ve got them sorted by size largest to smallest if I click again it’ll reverse the sort so it goes smallest to largest now I can sort by type so if you if you got various types of files in a folder and you know you’re looking specifically for a PDF it’ll put all the PDFs together and you’ll have uh you know fewer files to search through you can ignore all the non- PDFs right you can sort by date if you want to see uh what’s the most recent or what are the oldest files uh or or just looking for something in a particular date range makes it much easier to to find and then of course the uh the default sorting is by name and you can have that go um you know up the alphabet or down so another thing to know uh is that you know let let’s just stretch this out a little bit here further so on on the left here you see see this the structure and there’s the little arrows right so when the arrow is pointing down that means that that folder is expanded right if I click that down arrow it collapses the folder right if I want to expand say here the common files folder I click on that and then it shows me the files immediately uh or the folders I should say immediately um below uh there could be files but the files will never be listed on this side um this is just the folder structure right so and you can keep expanding right uh to get deeper and deeper into the folder structure uh so so that that’s how you kind of walk through it right and um another thing you should know is let’s go into documents here for example so you’ve got your documents folder you’re creating documents by default if you’re using Microsoft Word or something similar uh your documents are going to be saved in this folder right but uh you know once you get to a few hundred files uh it can get confusing just trying to find one or make sense of it all so uh the thing is to create your own folder structure right the the computer comes with a bunch of folders but you know you’re going to want to make your own so in that case we’re in documents make sure you’ve clicked on the right somewhere in the white space on the right hand side right right and then you can click on new up here in the upper left and choose folder right and then here you can say uh you know different categories right uh you know click again in the Whit space new folder right and then new folder right and then you can drag and drop your files into those folders um from from anywhere right if you have uh if you have this area expanded on the left hand side you can go into another folder and drag them from that folder into these ones right so and of course you can keep you can keep going and doing subfolders right uh and if you don’t want to click new there you can rightclick and say new folder right from in this area right and then you know right click new folder right and and so on so now we have right your uh documents repairs laundry and in this breadcrumb there’s there’s so many ways to move around here right so you you can click the little arrow between repairs and laundry and it’ll show you uh the other options right so we can click on kitchen there for example and uh now we’re in the other folder there are even some options for creating some file types when you right click so you can right click and say new text document right and then you could create a document you know relevant to your current uh folder topic right and uh even here we have similar choices in the upper left corner now I’m not sure why it’s not actually expanding here on the left the way it normally would let’s just try closing and reopening file explorer here we go into documents repairs oh it maximize it kitchen H for some reason this system is a little bit buggy yeah so I just paused recording and checked on why this might be happening and a recent update to Windows 11 has uh introduced this strange little bug so um I would I would still turn on expand to folders but it won’t necessarily always work until Microsoft fix it it uh where we should see ourselves right if we’re in documents repairs kitchen is uh you know under Drive C we got users right and uh you know under under users you’ve got different usernames depending on how your system is set up if you click on your start button you can see what your actual username is in this case someone else right so uh we click on that folder and then if we go into documents right and we’ve got repairs kitchen that’s what should have expanded right on the left hand side and for some reason won’t do it today but maybe tomorrow so I just mentioned a a little bit about right clicking so the thing about right clicking is that it’s context sensitive so it depends on what you’re clicking on uh will it depends what your menu you’re going to get right so for example if I right click on this file on the desktop you know I get these particular choices right if I right click on the taskbar I get these particular choices you know if I right click on the one drive icon here in uh the system tray you know I get a whole other uh bunch of options right for example I can quit one drive and uh right clicking which we’ve already done on the start button gives us a bunch of uh options quick access to Common tasks in Windows right so um just keep in mind that if you’re not sure what to do in Windows just try right clicking wherever you are so here I’ve right clicked on the desktop you know I could go into display settings or personalize and tweak things there um in fact let’s jump into display settings because I will show you something that uh will help a lot of you if you have a monitor uh high resolution monitor on a new computer uh the icons are going to seem uh very small con compared to you know older uh let’s call uh classic monitors right and uh that that might be too small for your comfort right so you can click on display resolution here and choose a different resolution now the higher the highest number it tends to be the uh recommended resolution for your monitor and usually that’s going to be your default right but uh if you choose some smaller numbers uh you may find that uh everything just looks uh you know that much bigger and more visually accessible for you so a couple of notes about that um don’t choose any numbers below uh 7 68 uh just because anything smaller than that uh a lot of software just won’t fit right so you’ll open up a window it’ll have a bunch of settings and everything there’ll be a save button at the bottom but because the window is taller than your 768 uh you can’t even see the save button you can’t click on it you don’t know it’s there and you’re stuck right so that would be the very lowest uh that you would want to go and um otherwise the other thing to look out for is the aspect ratio right so if you have a a very uh say a widescreen monitor um you you don’t want uh the number pairings that are more square right because then you’re going to have uh you know those black bars on the left and right hand side of your monitor uh where you know your your monitor is just not being used so um play around with the different settings and find one where the icon look a good size but the uh background of your desktop fits completely on the monitor all right um and other than that I think I can show you how to change the text size on your system which is also something that can help for visuals so to do that let’s start from scratch here we’re going to close that window there we’re going to right click then click on settings right click on the start button of course and then in the uh find a setting area here just type in the word text and you’ll see text size all right click on that it’ll bring you to the accessibility Tex size area and there’s a little slider here right this is a preview of how things are so this is the default a on this computer and we can pull that uh until things get uh very large right so um now a warning would be if you make them if you pull it all the way to the right uh you’ll find that on in some software the text is so big it no longer fits in the space allotted to it in the software so things are going to either overlap or or be cut off right so uh you want to find some nice median uh compromise so that you know you’ve got the bigger text but it’s not too big uh what that means for you on your system will differ so you can play around with it but you know you could start by just pulling this into the middle for example and hitting apply note the size of the options here on the left when I hit apply and see how much bigger they are right so uh for those of you with limited Vision uh or just don’t like squinting you have you have the option to play around with the size of your text let’s close that off and we’ll close off this video just if you have any questions comments Etc um put them in the comment section below

By Amjad Izhar
Contact: amjad.izhar@gmail.com
https://amjadizhar.blog

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