Highlight files in windows explorer

Once the files or folders are highlighted, right-click one of the highlighted files or folders to view available options to cut, copy, or delete. For additional help and information, see the below section on what can be done after the files or folders are highlighted.

If you have many files to select, the drag-and-select method is the easiest way to select a lot of files. You can click-and-drag a box around the files or folders you want to select. Doing so selects all files and folders in that box, as shown in the animated picture. To do this, click and hold your left mouse button on the top-left portion of where you want to start highlighting.

Next, drag the box until the last file or folder is highlighted. Once the files are selected, they can be copied , cut , or dragged to another window to move them. Once the files or folders are highlighted, right-click one of the highlighted files or folders to view available options, including cut, copy, or delete. If you compress a file, using the NTFS file compression feature not the support for Zip files , then Explorer will render it was blue, instead of the normal Black color. If you encrypt a file, then Explorer will render it green.

Note that using the NTFS file encryption feature may require a Professional version of Microsoft Windows, so that may or may not be an option depending on what flavor of Microsoft Windows you are using.

That's what I can offer to you as far as options built-in into Explorer. I'm not saying that the flexibility is as good as what is offered by the Mac interface that you were describing. By the way: If you weren't trying to use Explorer the built-in graphical file manager , you may have other options. Web pages can show the contents of a directory, and web pages support color. Getting into third party solutions, there are command line programs that will allow customizable colors to be placed on files based on which file extension the software uses.

Modern versions of Windows do come with built-in support for some programming languages e. So, if anybody is seeking other options, then custom solutions could be created. Some of the other answers on this page mention some additional additional third party options, which may offer you some easy pre-made solutions if you're willing to download software for such a feature.

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Your File Explorer has a ribbon that gives you access to several tools to carry out an array of operations. Some of the operations include modification of items, moving and copying of items, and selection of items. Step 4: Within the Select Group, you can either click Select All to select all the items in that window or click Invert Selection to reverse your selection of items.

The methods explained above not only work for selecting multiple files, but can also be used to select multiple folders or a combination of files and folders.

That way you can quickly cut or copy files to move them around at one go. If you're working with a large volume of files and folders, the File Explorer can become unresponsive at times.

Check our guide to fix an unresponsive File Explorer on Windows Need an online storage device to backup the files on your Windows 10 PC? Learn how to add iCloud to the Windows 10 File Explorer in this article. Want to be more productive on your Windows 7 PC? Check this awesome checkboxes tip now! Are you irked by the Windows confirmatino whenever you want to delete files?