I just made a huge discovery that has greatly increased the usability of my Chromebook - how to copy/move files within and between the internal SSD and external media (USB memory sticks and SD cards). It’s actually easy to do, but requiring about as inobvious a method as Google could possibly create. 

I found this method because of extreme frustration in managing files in the File Shelf (the internal SSD of the Chromebook). Using the File Manager (invoked by CTRL-M) you can view files, delete files, rename files, open a limited number of file types, and create folders. However, you can’t move existing files into the folders you may create. All this is made even more frustrating given the fact that if you download a document from Google Docs, you never get an option for choosing a folder and the document is simply downloaded directly to the root level of the File Shelf.

Now I know that Google really wants Chromebook users to avoid using local files and store files and documents in the cloud, but sometimes it’s a whole lot handier and faster to have something available locally. This is especially true if you regularly find yourself in situations where access to the internet is simply impossible. I find myself in such situations every week when I’m flying on business.

So, how can you move a file into a folder, or move files between external media and the SSD? Here’s how to do it!

First of all, you need to be able to access the File Shelf and external media through some mechanism other than the built-in File Manager. This is actually easy to do if you are aware of two very special URLs that you can enter into Chrome:

file:///home/chronos/user/Downloads/ - the URL for accessing the directory structure of the File Shelf

file:///media/ - the URL for accessing external media

I suggest you save both of these as bookmarks for easy access. Accessing either using Chrome will generate a file listing page containing file or directory names, file sizes, and last modification dates. An example of my File Shelf screen is shown in the accompanying picture. Left-clicking on a directory name will open the directory and reveal the files contained within. Left-clicking on a file name will result in Chrome attempting to open the file. If Chrome doesn’t understand the file type, it will attempt to open it as a text file.

Now here’s the big news, right-clicking on a file name will pop-up a menu containing, among other things, a “Save link as …” entry. This is the normal file save operation that you would use for downloading a file from an Internet web page. Selecting this option will open the normal File Save dialog box. You can use this to navigate to wherever you want the file saved to. You can then click the Save button and the normal download operation starts, but this time instead of downloading a file from the Web you are actually copying a file within your Chromebook.

When the operation completes you’ll now have two copies of the file in two different locations within your Chromebook. If you wanted to simply move the file rather than make an additional copy of it you’ll need to manually delete the original version, which can be easily accomplished using the normal File Manager.

That’s it! I just wish that this feature had been documented somewhere by Google. It took me many days of using my Chromebook to figure out how to do this!

By the way, this posting was created using ScratchPad, one very handy tool for creating simple documents offline on a Chromebook. But that’s another story!!!