Virginia DeBolt (bio) writes the bi-weekly Elder Geek column for Time Goes By in which she takes the mystery out of techie things all bloggers and internet users need to know to simplify computer use. She has written several books on technology and keeps two blogs herself, Web Teacher and First 50 Words. You will find links to Virginia's previous Time Goes By Elder Geek columns here.

What if you are trying to attach several photos to an email or select more than one item from your hard drive? Do you have to attach the items one at a time or is there a way to select more than one file at a time?

One method of doing this is called Shift-clicking. You can select a whole batch of files that are listed side-by-side on your hard drive using Shift-Click. Select the first item, hold down the Shift key, and select the last item. Here's a video of how you do it.

Shift-clicking only works for groups of files that are next to each other in the same folder.

What if you want to select a file that is not right next to the other file or files you selected? For this you use either a Ctrl-Click (on Windows) or a Cmd-Click (on Mac). You can select two or more widely separated files within a folder using this method. Select the first one, hold down the Ctrl or Cmd key, and select the next one. Repeat, with the Ctrl/Cmd key held down, until you are finished. Here's a video of how you do it.

You may not use the same email programs I do, so you may not see exactly what the videos show, but your email program will have an attach feature somewhere. When you activate it, you will be presented with a form asking you to find the items to attach on your hard drive. Use either the Shift-Click or the Ctrl-Click/Cmd-Click method to select everything you want in one browse through a folder.

In the case of attached photos, which I used in my example, you might not want to attach more than three or so to any particular email. Photos take quite a while to download. An email with 10 or 20 huge photos attached can take a long time to download.

This method works for selecting any type of file: documents, PDF files, whatever. You can select multiple files this way to drag them to a CD to burn or to a flash drive to make a backup or even to select a set of files to delete. It's all selecting, no matter what type of file it is or what you intend to do with it.

At The Elder Storytellling Place today, Johna Ferguson: My Writing Career