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Windows XP Tutorials: Moving Folders on your Hard Drive

Drag and Drop Moving

The easiest way to move one folder to another folder is to use drag and drop. And the easiest way to explain drag and drop is by doing it!

To drag the new folder you created earlier and drop it inside your "My Documents" folder, do the following:

Click on your new folder once with the left hand mouse button
The folder will be highlighted
Keep you left hand mouse button held down
Move your mouse around the screen. You should see a faint outline of the folder moving with your mouse
Now move the folder over the top of the folder called "My Documents" (Still with your Left mouse button held down!)
The My Documents folder will be highlight as well
Once your My Documents folder is highlighted, let go of your left hand mouse button
The new folder will disappear. It has been moved to My Documents

In the image below, a folder called "MyWPProjects" is being dragged to the My Documents folder on the C Drive.

Drag and Drop Moving

Cut and Paste Moving

If all that was a bit tricky, you can use Cut and Paste to move your folder instead.

To cut and paste one folder inside another, do the following:

Click on the folder you want to move (One click, left hand button), in our case "My WP Projects"
From the File, Edit, View, Go menu bar in Windows Explorer click "Edit"
From the menu that drops down, click the word "Cut" with your Left mouse button
The folder you selected will appear fainter
Now, Double Click the folder you want to move your new folder into, or select one from the list on the left hand side. In our case that's the "My Documents" folder. So Click the "My Documents" folder
Once in the "My Documents" folder, From the File, Edit, View, Go menu bar in Windows Explorer click Edit
From the menu that drops down, click Paste
Your folder will be pasted from your root folder on the C drive into your My Documents folder

Instead of cutting the folder and pasting, you can just Copy the folder instead. To copy the folder instead of cutting, follow the steps outlined above, but when the menus drop down select "Copy". Then select "Paste" after you have double clicked on the My Documents folders.

Everything we've said above about folders also applies to files. In other words, you can rename a file like you did above, you can copy a file, move it with drag and drop or cut and paste, and you can even create a file with Windows Explorer. Just click on File. From the sub menu select New. You'll see a list of software packages that you can create new files for.

In the next lesson, we'll look at how to copy files from a CD Rom to your hard drive.

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