Saving Files to Documents and Folders

There have been many times, a lot of people that work on the computer and find out that they don't maintain their files saved and folders created properly. Some were saved in My Documents some in Downloads, some in C drive, some in D drive, some in Public folder and even some in Windows directory. Files were all over the computer hard disk and is not arranged, so when it is time to look for it they get into trouble.

So the fastest way of looking for the file is, if you remember the name of the file you can always go to Start and on top of the start button will be the Search programs and files and type in the file name and click on the search icon beside it in windows 7.

In the old days (and even today) before computer were available, i asked, how do the files and folders were arrange to the filing cabinet? Normally the paper would be arrange by name or date and then kept in a file for the person or company name. And they are arranged in alphabetical order in the filing cabinet. Or if you want to separate out personal and company then you could, a bit more work but faster to find.

Same with the computer, if you think that My Documents is a good to save all your documents and files, and making it the main filing cabinet the please do so. If not, and you want to make D drive as your main filing cabinet you can do so as well.

But please make sure to do create folders and sub-folders properly. Example:
Inside My Documents Folder
You create a main folder name for COMPANY A
Inside the folder (sub-folder) one for Director 1, one for Director 2

So anytime you draft a file for director 1 and try to save it, you have to save as and look for My Documents then COMPANY A then Director 1.

There are times when we create too many documents we don't remember when it was done and when we save a file with the same name it will overwrite the existing file. If you would want to keep the existing file the you have to give a different name.

What i like to normally do is to name my files or folder using the date format.
Example
year first (2013) month second (10) and date third (01) and a name last (companyA).
So it will look like this 20131001companyA. 

So if the file is not there first thing you can search is the year like 2013 and all words containing 2013 will appear.


I have seen this format many a times while doing scanning and also while transferring images from digital camera to the computer and find that it is a good format to use and it has never fail me yet. So you might want to give it a try.

The real purpose is when you arrange and do proper file management, you will know exactly, what date the document was created and where the files are stored or kept and will not need help to find those files.