Page 213 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Selecting Icons

Before you can delete, rename, move, copy, or otherwise tamper with any

icon, you have to be able to select it somehow. By highlighting it, you’re
essentially telling Windows what you want to operate on.

By Tapping or Clicking

To select one icon, just click it once. To select multiple icons at once—in

preparation for moving, copying, renaming, or deleting them en masse, for
example—use one of these techniques:

Select all. Highlight all the icons in a window by using the “Select
all” button on the Ribbon’s Home tab. (Or press Ctrl+A, its

keyboard equivalent.)

Highlight several consecutive icons. Start with your cursor above

and to one side of the icons, and then drag diagonally. As you drag,
you create a temporary shaded blue rectangle. Any icon that falls
within this rectangle darkens to indicate that it’s been selected.

Alternatively, click the first icon you want to highlight, and then
Shift-click the last one. All the files in between are automatically
selected, along with the two you clicked. (These techniques work
in any folder view: Details, Icon, Content, or whatever.)

Tip
If you include a particular icon in your diagonally dragged group by mistake, Ctrl-click it to
remove it from the selected cluster.

Highlight nonconsecutive icons. Suppose you want to highlight
only the first, third, and seventh icons in the list. Start by clicking
icon No. 1; then Ctrl-click each of the others. (If you Ctrl-click a
selected icon again, you deselect it. A good time to use this trick is

when you highlight an icon by accident.)