how this works is mysterious to me.  I was able to access the directories and add some files.  Question: how do I edit these directories?  Returning to the feature I find I cannot access the directories even to upload.  I’ve forgotten something simple but important.  Please remind me, someone.  Thanks.

Huh?  I’m a bit confused by what you wrote.

If you need to create, edit, or delete the actual directories on your server you need to do that outside of EE.  Try using FTP.  Once the directories exist, you can configure things in EE under Admin > File Upload Preferences.

Sorry to be confusing.  Let me try to be more clear:

From the Admin>File Upload Preferences,

how can I review the contents of directories?   

how can I delete files from these directories?

why do the the contents of one directory show up in the default as well?

Thanks for your help.

The file manager in EE isn’t that advanced.  You would need to use FTP to really manage the directory.  Someone was working on a full file management module some time ago (when the docs were first released, so a long time ago now) but I don’t know what happened to that.

> From the Admin>File Upload Preferences,

how can I review the contents of directories?

You don’t.  That area in the Control Panel is simply for setup.  When you go to the ‘Publish’ tab and click the File Upload link, there is an option to browse the contents of the selected destination.

> how can I delete files from these directories?

You can’t from within EE.  You’d need to do something such as FTP to your server to delete the image.

> why do the the contents of one directory show up in the default as well?

That really depends on how you have the upload destinations set up.  It sounds like you might be specifying the same location for two upload destinations.