Fife Schools Technology

The past week’s weather gave us many opportunities to use our automated call system. This also gave us the opportunity to answer some questions about the system.

Read the FAQs here: http://www.fifeschools.com/depts/tech/help/CallSystemFAQs.html

One of the no-so-fun computer tasks is cleaning up old files. They take up hard drive space and make it harder to find the stuff you really need. While it is possible to increase storage space (and we do so as needed), it is hard to justify purchasing more hard drive space unless we’re making good use of the space we have.

It can take a lot of time to look for old files but here is a hint to make that a more efficient process. Search for the largest files first and delete or archive those files no longer needed. Here’s how I do it:

1. Open your My Documents folder (this will work with any folder).
2. Click on the Search button on the Task Bar.
3. Click on All files and folders on the right margin.
4. Leave the name field blank.
5. Click on What size is it? and options will appear.
6. Click the Large (more than 1 MB) option.
7. Click the Search button.
8. After the search is finished, sort the list by size by clicking on the Size label at the top of the list to show the largest files at the top.
9. Decide if you need those large files and delete or archive somewhere else.

Hope that helps.

We’re asked about ZIP files from time to time… specifically how to open them. There is special software to manage ZIP files (and other compressed files) but do you need something special? Nope.

Windows has built-in ability to create and open ZIP files.

To create a ZIP, right-click on the file(s) or folder you want to convert to a ZIP and choose “Send To” > “Compressed (zipped) Folder”. This will create a new folder that has a little zipper on the folder icon.

To open a ZIP, right-click on the zipped folder and choose “Extract All…” . That will take you through a wizard, allowing you to choose where to save the extracted folder.

Not sure what a ZIP file is? Check out my next post. I give a brief explanation.