Why are files in blue?

[Wowbagger]

Suddenly my XP pro system started showing some filenames in black and some
in blue. What is happening here?

--
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"He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with
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[purplehaz]

Blue files are compressed files. They get that way when you run the disk
clean up tool.

 

[Ralf Baumhoefer]

RTFM.
Blue files are compressed files, or files in a compressed directory.

 

[Gordon]

Suddenly my XP pro system started showing some filenames in black and some
in blue. What is happening here?

The blue files are compressed. And please correct your sig - it should only
be FOUR lines.

 

[DennisLazo.com]

the blue files are compressed files, which means that they use up smaller
disk space. you don't need to do anything in order to access them. if
these are your documents, just open them as though they were uncompressed as
windows will uncompress them automatically for you.

hope this helps.

 

[RHinNC]

If I have compressed files on my XP system and copy them to a CD will I be
able to access them on a Win95 or 98 system?

 

[Wowbagger]

RTFM.
Blue files are compressed files, or files in a compressed directory.

I certainly would have remembered compressing files or a directory and would
have said "hey! I just compressed my directory and now the files are
blue... why is this?"

The situation is that when I went home last night all was normal. When I
came in this morning some files were blue, some were not.

 

[purplehaz]

In case you missed my first reply:
Blue files are compressed files. They get that way when you run the disk
clean up tool.

 

[purplehaz]

If you use xp's zip utility to zip them up and compress them, then yes they
work fine on older os's. A zip file is a zip file. If it's xp auto-compress,
once you access the file, copy, open it, whatever it uncompresses, so the
compressed file would be uncompressed before it gets copied to the cd.

 

[CS]

Suddenly my XP pro system started showing some filenames in black and some
in blue. What is happening here?

Blue = compressed.

 

[Glenn]

I get the impression from the last several answers that blue = compressed.


A follow up question. What if I would rather that they weren't compressed?

A second follow-up. This was touched on with coping to cd but say when my
xp is networked to my 98se. Will they transfer correctly? Or should they
be uncompressed as in the above question and how do I do it??

Glenn

 

[Wowbagger]

Which we didn't do. I suspect that the "helpful" admin has been messing
with the systems.

 

[purplehaz]

Could be. Someone ran it. Nothing to worry about though, just ignore them.

 

[purplehaz]

If using the xp auto-compress they will auto-decompress anytime you access
or use them. The user has to do nothing, xp just does it on its own.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

By design, WinXP automatically compresses files that do not get
used frequently, and, if you've left the default settings intact,
displays those files in blue.

If you wish to change this behavior, in Windows Explorer, click
Tools > Folder Options > View > Advanced settings: Show encrypted or
compressed NTFS files in color.


Bruce Chambers
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