I’m surprised at how often I encounter people that don’t know how to select multiple files in their windows explorer folder without using their mouse awkwardly to try drag all the ones they want. But then again, I think about how you can’t really know this unless someone told you, b/c it’s not like it’s very intuitive or written clearly in a manual somewhere. As a matter of fact, if you click on the Windows XP Help section, and type in “select multiple files” you get zero results.
Anyways, here is how you do it to select just certain files.
1. First, go into ‘detail’ view by right-clicking anywhere in your folder, and then going to view > details (it’s the easiest way to view all your files if you have a lot)
2. Hold down the CONTROL key on your keyboard, and select the first file. Then while still holding down that button, select the second, third, etc. file. You have more than one selected.
3. Now you can right-click again, and cut or copy the files to move/copy them to your desired destination.
Now here is how you select a range of files:
1. Assuming you’re still in detail view, hold down the SHIFT button, and then click the first file.
2. Then scroll down to the last file you want to select with the SHIFT button still down. Now you’ve selected everything in between as well. Simple. Again, you can cut/copy to whereever you want.
another tip:
Many windows applications work this way with CONTROL select and SHIFT select. Programs such as Picasa photo manager by Google uses the same select keys. It’s a fast way to select mutiple files.
Hope today’s tech tip for the average joe was helpful.
By the way, on a personal note, I’m feeling a bit lonely! I’m not sure if I’m talking to an empty room or if anyone is actually finding my tips helpful. Please leave a comment if you can – otherwise, I guess it’s better if I just stopped wasting my time.
“If a tree falls in a forest with no one to hear it, then does it make a sound?”
hi, is there any checkboxes next to files that we can select instead?
that’s a good ques, but no. I always thought windows was weak in this aspect. selecting and moving/copying files is tricky for basic users unless someone tells you this tutorial. to be fair, mac is the same in handling files. a checkbox makes a lot of sense!
I have used this feature of Windows for several years, but today, having just reinstalled Windows XP Pro, I found that holding down Shift or Control no longer had any effect and I could now only select one file at a time. Do you by any chance know how I can get the functionality of these keys back?
Hi Terry, I doubt that it’s a operating system issue (just a guess). Have you tried with a different keyboard? Also, are you getting this problem even after you reboot your computer?
thank you. No your not talking to an empty room and your tip was very helpfull. Whilst using windows 98 I could always hold down shift to select multiple files, however since upgrading to XP everytime i held shift and started to select multiple files all i ended up doing was making loads and loads of copies of each file…..but now, thanks to your tip my problem is solved, the diference with xp is you have to have a ‘detailed view’ to select multiple files, at last….
How about files that start with a dot (“.”)? I selected folders to copy and was expecting all the files inside the folder to be copied but I later found out that files starting with a dot were not selected; hence not copied.
My apologies for not getting back to you sooner. As soon as I had typed the original message I thought I might have made a mistake and that a thread headed “Comments” should really be used for comment rather than asking for help, so I did not keep an eye on your web page and have only seen your reply today.
The problem arose when I was helping a friend who is not very well acquainted with computers to reinstall Windows XP Home on his Dell 2350 computer after a bad virus attack caused by (a) allowing visiting relatives unrestricted access and (b) failing to renew his AV subscription.
I take your point about using an alternative keyboard although I was thinking more along the lines of a software fault. He has had the computer for three years from new but not used it very much. Some proof of this is that when I opened the tower for a memory upgrade it had hardly a trace of dust inside. The room environment is very clean as is the keyboard. Because of this, I was assuming the keyboard was good, but heaven knows I’ve had plenty of kit fail in the first year, so you never know. On the other hand, both the Shift and the Control keys work perfectly on their own for things like word processing tasks or keyboard shortcut combinations.
Since my original post, I have been visiting him once a week and spending an hour with him on the computer to clue him up on various things. I sometimes boot up the machine myself and have found that this Windows Explorer problem comes and goes from week to week. I have not been able to detect any pattern of behaviour causing the fault so far.
hello, sorry for the late post – I’m quite busy these days, as you can see I have not posted anything new in awhile. anyways, seems to me like you probably have something deeper like a registry issue.
but try a windows explorer alternative, like “explorer XP”. It’s free and offers tabbed windows.
hey sam, not sure – I’ve never tried that myself. but ques – why do you have files starting w/ a period? can you rename them? perhaps it’s a minor windows issue. windows probably is getting confused, since usually after a period, you have the file suffix, such as doc, or xls.
Hi, question about selecting multiple items from a drop down menu while using Internet Explorer 7.0. Holding down the Control Key and left-clicking opens another Internet Explorer window. Holding down Shift Key selects multiple files, but every item between first click and second click are highlighted. IE 6.0 worked fine.
How do I select the mutiple items that are not in order?
hi jtona,
I think you are confused between the WINDOWS explorer, which views your local folders/files on your computer, and INTERNET explorer, which is for browsing the web. This blog was about the former, not the latter. Hope that clarifies this for you.
Since Internet explorer updated I have had the same problem with the ctrl + left click on the mouse opening a new window.
I always used the above to select multiple options on a list of items on on-line applications. Now I just keep getting new windows opened. How the heck do you select different items from a list now without getting a new window?
I’m using Win 98, Classic View. When selecting multiple files over several columns I select the first file, then scroll to the last with the scroll wheel of my Logitech mouse. As soon as I press the shift key the view jumps back to the first file several columns to the left and I have to repaet the process, whereupon it works the second time. But I always have to do eit twice, which is an annoying doubling of the work to accomplish a simple task. If I keep the shift key pressed the scroll wheel does’t work. I’ve tried disabling the Logitech firmware to no avail. Is this a Windows problem or something peculiar to my mouse?
hi harold, you’re not doing it correctly. after you select the last file, press the left click button on your mouse, not the shift button.
again, hold shift, click the first button, keep holding shift (don’t let go) and then click the last file.
As I said, if I keep the shift key pressed the scroll wheel on the mouse doesn’t work and I have to drag the scroll bar on the bottom of the window pane. I guess the real question would be how do you defeat the windows feature that causes the view to jump to whatever file is already selected upon pressing the shift key? This is also a problem when selecting multiple files for download in xNews (newsreader).
Hi
I was already aware of the multiple file selection mechanisms but I have a problem with them. We do a lot of photo management at home (moving sets of files around all the time). We do that in the image view of explorer (I don’t know if that is the real name of that view, I seem to run the Dutch version at home). When working very fast a left mouse click often goes together with an accidental mouse move causing the files selected sofar to be copied in the same directory. When having many files in the directory, it is even not directly visible that this happens. Image browsing software require a mouse-drag distance of at least the size of the pictogram (thumbnail) which does not happen accidentely. Do you know to get rid of this accidental copy behaviour or windows explorer? (If this cannot be solved in explorer I need to go to professional photo management software which have many more features than I need (moving files around) because the free/cheap software is mostly to slow or suffer from different problems).
hi edwin,
try using google’s freeware picasa @ http://www.picasa.com
It only happens if you press the CTRL-Button while selecting. If you use CTRL and ALT at the same time, it doesn’t happen that you accidentially copy files.
@ edwin: also, just press control+Z when you do something on accident. It does an undo so things are back the way they were.
I would like to see a continuation of the topic
Hi Maximus, not quite sure what else you wanna hear on this. It’s just straightforward.
yes, and thanks
Greetings. I’m a big fan of Windows Explorer. I’ve been using it for years. IS there a way to make all directories and each subdirectory thereafter open in the DETAILS view? Also, when attaching items in Outlook Express, is there a way for it to open in DETAILS view too? I’d be happy to edit the registry to make this happen all the time. thanks weldon
Hi Weldon, this is for XP.
Go into windows explorer, click on Help, enter “views” and click search. Top choice should be “Make all folder views the same” click on that to get the following . . .
To make all folder views the same
Open a folder and select a folder view.
For help with selecting a folder view, see Change how you view items in a folder.
On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
On the View tab, click Apply to All Folders.
Note
To reset all folders to the settings that were in effect when Windows XP was installed, click Reset All Folders.
Have a lovely day!
Great tip! I always wished that I select multiple files that way, thanks!
Thanks! I needed that one. Good tip!
glad I could help! I’m way too busy now to post new posts though… I’ll try again soon. I saw someone on giveawayoftheday.com had posted a trackback to this site. thx!
I recently faced a range selection problem on my windows 2000 system: the selection with shift and control was not possible anymore. Furthermore, the mouse was stuck for 2-3 seconds after every key hit. I finally discovered I just had to move the (mouse and keyboard) sender to a different location, now everything’s alright!
Heaps and heaps of thanks
Does anyone know how to select multiple folders in outlook?!?!?!
I have a question? For selecting the multiple rows using dragging the mouse, do we have any terminology. Like a specific term for this..??
I am queries to know this….?? Please reply…Your response will be appreciated…
With vista they have checkboxes next to the files. It took a while to get used to this…
Strange as it may seem, I was asked this question by an elderly user “how to select multiple files in Picasa”. I thought of the usage “give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime” and showed him how to get answers for such queries by searching in a browser and voila I got a link to this page.
Yes your tips are quite useful for many, so dont give up, you have a very grateful audience.
I have a similar problem. When I try to select multiple random files with the left Ctrl key, it doesn’t consistently work. However, it always works when I use the right Ctrl key. This is a brand new Dell laptop (less than two weeks old).
Any ideas?
Interesting. You are doing a good job.
The shift-click has always worked for me to select a range… until today! Ctrl-click still works, and I’ve rebooted and the problem persists. I seem to remember having this problem several years ago, I’m wondering if there is a toggle for these hotkeys somewhere…
Was going crazy. I had the same issue that March 16 had. I do use a wireless keyboard/mouse. I recently moved the receiver and began having that problem (but did not associate the problem to the receiver position under my desk). I just tried moving my keyboard a foot or so, and problem fixed!!!
Hi I had this question and saw some people say they have same issue. This is how I used to select multiple files in windows 98 but now all my machines are running windows xp professional and this technique does not work. I have tried it on 5 of my machines all used different install disk so its not an install issue. You hold control select first file then try to click another file in the list further down and it just takes the highlight off the first file and then highlights the second file. Does xp pro have a different way to do this as this way doesnt work with xp pro? I even tried on computers that arent mine and they wont do it either??
I was in windows explorer looking at some pictures in thumbnail view. Shift-click had always worked before, but suddenly it didn’t! Finally I switched to list view, and Shift-click worked there, then I switched back to thumbnail view and it was working again. I have no idea what happened, but maybe this “fix” of switching views will work for someone else?
P.S. I am using WinXP Home Edition with a wired mouse and keyboard.
To Jennifer…..
Hope this will work for me too ’cause I have the same
problem and most extravagant I’d say, since Shift-Click
and Control-Click do work on drive C: but NOT on drive
D: or drive J: (a USB external HDD) !!!
I’m gonna try it as soon as I get home and post the results.
But if it doesn’t work, may be anyone else has faced and
solved this problem in another way?
Any help would be much appreciated…
wow, I’m surprised to see people still check out my blog.
Anyways, for those out there with some problems with explorer, try this:
1. press CONTROL + ALT + DELETE keys
2. Press task manager button
3. under Processes tab, find ‘explorer’. highlight and click ‘end process’ button
4. Go to File > New Task > and type in ‘explorer’.
That basically resets explorer and you should have all the functionalities back.
let me know if this is not the case.
Nope didnt help me. I finally had to go download Ultra explorer and that works fine just cant do the same with regular explorer in an xp pro setup. Now I am running windows 7 beta and it works on that machine which wouldnt do it when xp pro was on it so no idea what the deal is
Interesting tips and comments. I came here through Google. I was looking for a way to copy multiple folders with their files and subdirectories from one drive to another, WITHOUT having to go back and start over every time Windows finds a problem with a file. Instead of just skipping that file and making a note of it in a log like I think it should, it just shuts down and tells me why. Great, except that when I acknowledge the problem, Windows copy goes home for the night. I have to figure out where it quit and try to pick up from there. I need an “xcopy” for windows. Maybe I’ll search for that. Thanks.
For donlow
Google for TeraCopy. It works for Vista and perhaps for XP.
Try and see…
I do not have problems selecting multiple files, the problem I have is the reverse. Somtimes after I have previously selected a file to move or delete the next time I try to select any other file multiple files are selected. I have had this problem on several different versions of the windows operating system. The only cure I have found is to close the explorer window and open another. What am I doing wrong? How so I undo this behavior?
Thanks – have been looking for this but couldd not find it till now – thanks [and to google for providing the link]
I want to share my solution for a selection problem I was having.
I installed MSN plus! as addon for MSN (Live) Messenger and had a ‘boss key’ set up, with hotkey ctrl + space! This of course disabled my ability to select multiple files with ctrl + space but it took me a while to find out where the problem was.
I’ve had this issue for years with Windows: Whenever I’m using the “select a range” to open/use in some program that will use the files “in order”, the LAST item is always processed first, and then everything else in the correct order as I expect. A couple examples: If I open a range of images in photoshop, the last image selected opens first, followed by the 1st, 2nd, etc. Usually not so big a deal, but when we get to, say, using Acrobat to assemble a string of .pdf files that I’ve numbered to keep in order, again, I get the last 1st. Considering it’s been probably about a decade that I’ve experienced this issue using Windows xp and Vista, I’d figured someone else would have already caught this and gotten ignored by Microsoft, but I’m having a difficult time finding anything through google to substantiate that anyone else has this problem.
So, that’s my rant, thank you for listening.