open folder question

Hey everyone

I'm new to macs and have a question about folders. I hope I'm in the right section and sorry if I'm not.

My problem is that when I'm in an application like Word, Excel, Stata or SAS and I have to open a file from that app, I usually have my files saved to a usb drive. Of course most files will be in seperate folders. When I go in to those folders, the computer will show each folder and then right under each folder it will show every single file that is in that folder, which makes it very messy looking and hard to find stuff sometimes. I guess it's just a pet peeve of mine and it isn't a huge deal, but if anyone knows a way that I can change it so that when I'm opening files from apps I only see the folders and not every file that is within that folder, that would really be a huge help.

Thanks in advance.