Windows 7: Basic copy question

Advanced user new to Windows 7 - I need to copy about 220 MB of files from one folder to two other folders, all on the desktop. In XP, opening the source folder and doing SELECT ALL would give the COPY, MOVE, DELETE options on the left hand of the folder. How best to do in W 7 ? Use the COPY to Clipboard, then PASTE to the two other folders ? If so, is the Clipboard big enough to handle the copying of up to 1.5 GB in files ? Thanks.

Copy and paste. File operations don't use the clipboard to store files in transit.

hi Wtchdrmd, and welcome to sevenforums,

here are a few useful keyboard shortcuts:

Ctrl-A = select all

Ctrl-C = copy

Ctrl-X = cut

Ctrl-V = paste

you can also access cut/copy/paste by right-clicking the mouse.

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so, a quick way of copying files from one folder to two others would be:

1. open the folder in windows explorer
2. Ctrl-A to select all the files
3. Ctrl-C to copy files (or right-click > copy)
4. go to 1st destination folder in explorer
5. Ctrl-V to paste the files (or right-click > paste)
6. go to 2nd destination folder
7. Ctrl-V again or right-click > paste

Welcome to the windows 7 forums..

FWIW: I recommend cut and paste as using copy and paste leaves both folders with the same files. Takes up a lot of space and is unnecessary.
If you cut and paste, it happens almost immediately as long as both source and target are on the same drive as all the system needs to do is to change the directory entrys which is pretty fast.

Copying to another hard disk is slower as it actually has to copy the files.
Rich

I would use this - much safer. Context Menu - Add Copy To Folder and Move To Folder

Just in passing...

Myself... I would use my million-times-a-day workhorse Explorer-replacement Free Commander, and its clearly intuitive two-pane presentation. I use the over/under two-pane approach because it maximises the use of screen for long folder/file names. Either pane can be SOURCE or TARGET.

Once navigating the source pane to the FROM folder, and navigating the target pane to the TO folder, you use standard Windows Explorer keyboard/mouse techniques to select the contents from within the FROM folder just as you'd want (e.g. using CTRL+click to add multiple random items, CTRL+SHIFT+click to add consecutive items, etc.).

Then you can either drag (using left or right mouse buttons, like Explorer) from SOURCE pane to TARGET pane as you'd expect, or when familiar with the myriad set of keyboard shortcuts (which match Explorer, when possible... e.g. F2 for "rename") you can just use F5 for COPY or F6 for MOVE.

And, each COPY/MOVE pops up a "here is the name I will use, or you can rename it now" dialog with the existing folder/file name populated by default and just the filename portion highlighted. Thus the path prefix and filename extension will not be touched if you decide to rename the file itself. Super feature.




Also, if say you highlight multiple ZIP files you can then right-click and, for example, select Winrar from the context menu (if you have Winrar installed) and then select say "extract here". EACH of those multiple highlighted ZIP files will then be fed to Winrar for extraction, as if you'd done them one at a time. And, then, to add icing to the cake, the originally selected/highlighted ZIP files all still remain selected/highlighted... so you can now just click on the DELETE icon button on the toolbar (or use the DELETE key, or SHIFT+DELETE to bypass the recycle bin) and those selected/highlighted ZIP files will all be deleted without your having to re-select them all again for the delete!

In other words unlike Explorer, sequences of operations on a set of selected/highlighted items does NOT de-select them!!! Super-convenient.

Etc., etc., etc.

Countless Explorer-like functions performed far more understandably and conveniently with Free Commander and its two-pane approach, not to mention its countless ADDITIONAL capabilities that are not done by Explorer.

You owe it to yourself to give Free Commander a try as a super-Explorer, for use any and all times you would otherwise use Explorer. And... it's free!