.Zip files. A .zip file is a "compressed" file that needs to be "unzipped", "expanded", or "extracted"  before you can use it. Special programs are used to compess a file so it takes up less space on the hard drive / floppy disk, or takes less time to send as an attachment to an eMail. The programs that Zip also Unzip. The standard programs are PKZIP and WINZIP.

.Pdf files. These are files that one can read with Acrobat Reader. Adobe "Acrobat" creates documents that other folks can read without having your particular programs, as long as they have Acrobat Reader. The latter program is free--go to http://www.adobe.com to download it; in order to read .pdfs of music files, make sure you have either version 4+ or the latest version, because early versions of ver. 5 had a glitch that kept it from reading some music fonts. .Pdf files are also made nowadays by other programs such as PDFfactory.

Part of Windows operating system is a printing utility--when you click "Print" in top left "File" menu, or tool bar buttons in various programs, a dialogue box pops up. Look up top at the box with the white space; the name of your printer should be in it. At the right end of the box there is button; click it and a list of items will appear;   When the Acrobat or other PDF program is installed, it adds "Acrobat PDF writer" or similar statment to that list. Whenever you print a document, you can click on the PDF line, then click the OK or Print button in the dialogue box. The document will appear as a .pdf file in the file manager. You can then attach it to an eMail.

.txt files are simple documents that don't have the formatting added by word processing programs. You can read and modify them with WordPad, the word processor that comes with Windows operating system. Note that if you open WordPad then click on its Open button, the dialog box that pops up has a file manager screen and you click on the various folders to find the file you want. When you get to a folder that contains .txt files, they won't show up on that dialog box until you select ".txt files" in the little selection window--the default is ".doc".

Here's an important lesson that will help you deal with the files on your computer.
The mouse or trackball has at least 2 buttons, Left click to perform an action and Right click to open a "context" menu that offers a variety of actions that you select with left click. Henceforth when I say "click" I mean LEFT click.

If you right click on the "Start" button at the bottom left of your desktop screen, a menu pops up with several choices, one of which is "Explore". Left click on Explore, and a two-screen window opens. This is the file manager.  The left side lists the folders on your hard drive; if you left click on one of the folders,  the right screen lists the individual files that are in the folder.

Right now, open the file manager. At the very top of the screen are several choices, including "File" and "View". Click on "View"; the menu that opens has several choices. Click on "Details". The icons in the view will be replaced by text lists. Now you can see what's there much more clearly. In the left screen, the little + by each folder name means there are subfolders and if you click on the + the subfolders are revealed. Click on a folder and see what's on the right screen: the name of each file, followed by it's size, file type, date the file was made or modified. At the top of each column is the name of the column; if you click on that name, the files become resorted according to the info in that column. Click on "Modified" and the most recent files are at the top; click it again and the oldest files are at the top. Click on "Name" and the files are re-ordered alphabetically by file name.

Study the left view screen. This is a visualization of how your hard drive is organized. This is very basic knowledge for using your computer. Whenever you turn on your computer, take a few minutes to view and explore that screen, view the file list for a couple of folders.

Now scroll to the top of the left window. Click on "Harddrive [C:] ". Now click on "File" at the top left corner. The menu starts with "New". Click on it, the menu that pops up starts with "Folder". Click on it, and look at the right screen. At the bottom, highlighted, is "New Folder". Type in a new name, eg "Lyrics" and "Enter". The new folder will appear in the left screen.

Now locate the "Attachments" folder of your eMail program.

Also locate the "Downloads" (or whatever it's called) folder of your internet browser.
This may be easier said than done, because different programs organize their folders and subfolders differently.

Any of the files in these 2 folders can be copied or moved to folders that you create. Any time you want to install a new program, you have the option of creating a new folder, then telling the program installer where to put the program. I like to make a folder with the name of the program, not the company, so I can find it more easily. I also store the data generated by the program in subfolders under the program, not the "My Files" folder.

OK, you bought my Dixieland Fake Book, and I eMailed you a .zip file of the lyrics. It will be in the attachments folder. Go there. You want to COPY that .zip file to the Lyrics folder you made. Scroll the left screen til it shows the Lyrics directory; leave the folder alone. Now move the pointer to the .zip file, holding the RIGHT button down, move the mouse so the file is dragged over to the Lyrics folder; when the folder is highlighted, release the button. A menu will pop up with "Copy" and "Move" as 2 choices. Click on "Copy". Now click on the folder; the .zip file should be there. (If you held the left button, the file would be "Moved" to the Lyrics folder, but you don't want to do that; leaving the .zip file in the Attachments folder leaves you with a backup copy in case you screw up.)

Now RIGHT click on the .zip file in the Lyrics folder. A menu will pop up. It has various choices for dealing with the file. If you have a zip-unzip program, there will be a line or two about "extracting" or "Unzipping", etc., the file. Click it and the folder should suddenly have almost 200 .txt files. By the way, the .zip file will be untouched.
If no such line is in the Right-click menu, then you need to get a program.

Simple versions of the programs can be downloaded from the internet--search them on "Google", which is probably the best search engine on the net.

When you find the downloaded program, make a new folder, copy the file to it and click on the folder. The right screen should show an .exe file. Double-click on the .exe file and it should start installing, probably using the "installation wizard". When it installs, it will add one or 2 lines to the Right click menu. Now you can go back to the Lyrics .zip file, right click on it, click on the extract line.

For more practice, go to http://www.adobe.com to get Acrobat Reader.

An extremely useful program to buy is JASC's "Quick View Plus". This is a file reader that will view word processing files, graphics, spreadsheets, databases, many standard formats. If you use a lot of files in various ways, it's great. When it installs, it adds a line to your right-click menu. You can right-click on a file in the right screen, click on "Quick View Plus" and in most cases the file will come up in a separate view screen. Let's say you want to view the lyrics of a particular tune. You can view the contents of the file, then print it out or select all or part of it, "Copy" the selected portion, then "drop" someplace else. If you download graphics, you can view most graphics formats. Saves time opening other programs, which you may not need if you just want to look.
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Another lesson. Perhaps this will help you understand the functional parts of a computer.
Think of a computer as a workbench. When you want to do a job, you open drawers, get out your tools, get out your project. You do the job on top of the work bench. When done, you put the project away, put the tools back in their drawers.
The HARD DRIVE is your work bench, FOLDERS are the storage drawers. The PROGRAMS ("Applications") are the tools. The DATA FILES are the projects you're working on. RAM (Random Access Memory) is your work area on the top of the work bench .

Revised 12/4/05