Setting Up Windows XP Downloads Folder

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Gerard Mainardi. Today we're talking about how to organize your My Documents folder in Windows XP. Remember, Windows XP is a trademark of the Microsoft Corporation, and I am not affiliated with the Microsoft Corporation. Now right now I'd like to talk about using a Downloads folder. If you use things like Firefox, especially, which almost everyone is using nowadays, or instant messaging, or you're downloading a lot of installation files for programs that you like, it helps to create a Downloads folder in your My Documents, so you remember where this all is. Lets go into that and take a look. Remember, you just click on start, go to My Documents. Here we go. Now I've created a folder for myself, as you can see here, called Downloads. You can do this very easily for yourself. Right-click, go to new, folder, and just call it whatever you'd like. Downloads works for me. If you'd like to add an icon to it (like the little arrow I have here to help differentiate it), that's easy too. Right-click on it, scroll all the way to the bottom, it says Properties there. At the top you see the three tabs. Go to Customize, at the bottom go to Change Icon, and you'll have a ton of icons here. You can do this for any folder, but it helps for folders where you really want to have a distinct look. You can find a lot of things, like the little 'download' arrow that I have here. Inside Downloads, I have a different sub-folder for each thing that I use: for instant messaging, for things like Firefox, and for things like installation files, where I keep all of the different things that I use on my computer. Especially if you're using instant messaging, where you want to save a lot of conversations, or you're using a new program like Firefox, where you're constantly downloading, often to the desktop. That causes a lot of clutter; you lose track of a lot of things. Set up your file structure like this, and now we'll go through each program in the next lesson, and I'll show you how to download to each of those specific folders."