Moving files and folders

The Dreamweaver site window acts much like the Windows Explorer and Macintosh Finder, but it actually does much more than just moving and renaming files and folders. If you rename a file, Dreamweaver will update all the links to that file. If you copy a file into a different directory, Dreamweaver will again check all the files in your site and change all links to the file that was moved. Remember to always move and rename your files from within the Dreamweaver site tool.

Never rename or move files and folders outside Dreamweaver. If you use Windows Explorer or the Macintosh Finder to reorganize the files in your site, links will break and images will disappear from your pages.

Exercise: Rename a file or folder

1. right-click (Control click) on the file Research.html and select Rename
2. Type in the new name - OngoingResearch.html
   Another way to rename is to click on the file or folder, pause, then click on the name again.
3. A dialog box will appear that asks: "Update links in the following files?" Click the Update button and Dreamweaver will automatically change all of the links that refer to the file that was just renamed.

Exercise: Move a file into a new folder:

1. right-click (Control click) in the whitespace area of the local site and select New Folder
2. Name the new folder images
3. Select the file spacer.gif and drag it into the new images folder. To move multiple files, Ctrl-click (#-click) each of the files you want to move, then drag them as a group; to deselect a single file, Ctrl-click or #-click it again. You can also select one folder or file and Shift-click another to select all files and folders between the two.
4. when the Update Files dialog box appears, click Update
5. now move all of the other image files in your site into the images folder and let Dreamweaver update the links

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