Windows Tips: Organising your Files

Organising the Desktop | Organising your Files | Oops, I can't find my files!

When you create a new Word document, and Excel workbook or any other kind of file you have some decision to make about it:

• Do you want to save it or not?

• If you do want to save it, what do you want to name it?

• Where do you want to save it?

Name your document:

If you want to save a particular file you should name it appropriately. For example, Word always names a new document Document 1, Document 2, Document 3 etc with the number corresponding to the number of new documents you have created in that session.

If you open a new Word document and look at the top of the Word window you should see a blue bar running across. At the left hand end of this blue bar it will say something like Document 8 - Microsoft Word. This is the current name of the document and, in most cases, is a good indication that you have not saved your document. I say in most cases because you should normally save the document with a meaningful name which will be shown in the blue bar after you have saved it.

Word will happily save the document as Document 47 if you want but this makes it very difficult to easily find it later on when you want to open it again.

Let's say you have written a 10 page letter to your local Member of Parliament, Phredd Flintstone, regarding the state of the footpaths in your area. Letting Word name it "Document 136" is neither inspiring nor useful. You should probably name it something like "FlintstoneMP footpaths 060215" which is much more descriptive. It means a document to your MP Flintstone about the footpaths and written on 15th February 2006. It is easier to find dates if you reverse the numbers to Year Month Day format in filenames because you would normally look for the year first and then by month and then by day. You can search quickly through your files for "060215", but more on that later.

OK, you have written your 10 page letter and want to save it - you mean you haven't saved it already? Many people will type literally for hours before saving their document and then complain bitterly that they have lost it if they forget to save it or the computer crashes.

Lesson 1: Always save your document regularly as you are typing. The longest between saves the more you will loose if your computer crashes - or the dog grabs the power cord and pulls it out of the socket, or someone trips over it - you get the idea. As a rule of thumb I would suggest saving your document every 10 minutes - it is quick and easy to do and saves lots of tears and swearing later. Get into the habit!!. In fact, I normally save my document even before I have typed anything into it, but that's a bit extreme.

When you try to save your document for the first time you will always be presented with the "Save As" dialogue. This is because you need to tell the PC where to save it and what to call it. The default location to save the document to is usually "My Documents" as this is the default location from version 2000 onwards. We will see later in this section why this is not always a good location choice.

Now let's put this Saving into practice.

1. Open Microsoft Word - it should open with a new blank document
   
   

2. If you already have Word open and want to try this on a scrap document, open a new blank document. (Tip: Click on the New Document button at the left hand end of the toolbar )
   
   

3. This will open a new blank document. Now type something into the document. Your screen should look something like this -
   
   
   

4. Now do one of these:

   1. Select the file menu, and then click the "Save As" option.

   2. Click on the "Save" button on the toolbar
      

   3. Press the Control and S keys together

Doing any of these will display the "Save As" dialogue

This is a Windows XP dialogue box but if you ignore the big buttons down the side "History" down to "My Network Places" it will be very similar to the older versions.

Notice how the "Save In" window at the top shows "My Documents" and that near the bottom the "File Name" window show the text "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" which is selected (all blue colour). By default you will probably be placed in "My Documents" and the first sentence of your document will be inserted as the name. Well, it's a name, but not a great one for this exercise. Let's call it "FlintstoneMP footpath 060215"

If you have clicked somewhere else the existing name will lose it's selection so make sure you then hold down the left hand mouse button and drag the pointer of this to select it.

So, making sure that the File Name is still selected, type in FlintstoneMP footpath 060215 and then click the "save" button. Done, that's all there is to it.

Normally you will not have to worry about the "Save as Type" window you may have noticed at the bottom of the Save As dialogue. This is for a bit more advanced work.

Notice that the blue bar across the top has changed to

Now, type some more text into your document and pretend you have been working for 10 minutes or so. You need to save it again, but you do not need to go through the naming of the document again. Easiest way to save again is just press the Control key, and while it is pressed tap the S key once. Your changes will now have been saved.

Note: Pressing the Control Key and any other key together is usually shown as Ctrl + S or similar

You now know how to save a document with any name you like to the default location in My Documents.

If you ever need to save a copy of your document under a new name such as "FlintstoneMP footpath 060215 pothole" go to the File menu, select the Save As option and type in the new name in the File Name panel. You will then have two versions of the document.

Filing your documents

Now that you can save your document, you need to be able to save it in a more logical place that just in My Documents.

There are two ways to file documents whether they be paper or electronic.

1. You can file them as you would in a filing cabinet. Lets say it is a 3 drawer cabinet with the top drawer containing letters, the middle drawer containing invoices and the third drawer containing your accounts. Within the Invoices drawer you will have file hangers with each client having their own hanger. You would then file the papers in date order within that making it easy to find them again
   
   

2. Put a big box in the corner of the office and just throw all letters invoices and other documents into it. You know exactly where they are - in the box - but they are all muddled up and extremely difficult to find. A bit like putting all the photos of your grandchildren in a shoebox, but on a larger scale.

Makes sense to file them in order doesn't it? In a computer My Documents is similar to the big box in the corner of the room although it does store them alphabetically which is a bonus. But if you have more than 25 documents or so, I can guarantee that if you have had your computer more than a week you will have more, they get difficult to locate quickly.

The best way to file your documents is in a logical order and place similar to a filing cabinet. To do this you have to create "Folders" to store your documents in. You could have a folder equivalent to each drawer on the filing cabinet and more folders within each folder, one for each of your clients or types of documents. You can create these folders before you start saving your documents or you can create them while you save. It is better to get the overall structure set up before you start saving and only add folders whilst saving when you absolutely have to.

While I don't advocate simply saving everything in My Documents it can be a good place to start building your filing system. To be able to build your filing system you need to first think out your structure and then learn how to create the folders to save your precious files into.

Filing using (XP)

If you look on the computer desktop you should see and icon named My Computer.

Your icon may look different depending on what version of Windows you are using, but it will always have the words My Computer under it.

Now double click on this icon to display the My Computer dialogue. I will show the XP dialogue first and then a more generic on which should be similar for most versions of Windows.

This is the XP version and shows:

• Files stored on this computer - there are two icons in this case because this computer is shared by more than one person. The Shared Documents folder is for files everyone can get at and the gdsutt one is for files only accessable when gdsutt is logged on. You may or may not have this - don't worry about it yet.

• Hard Disk Drives: These are the hard disk(s) which are your storage disks on your computer. This screen show two disks named with the suffice (C:) and (D:). In most cases you will only have the C: drive

• Devices with Removable Storage: You may or may not have something in this area. In this case they allow access to digital camera storage cards through a card reader and also an extra USB port on my computer into which I can plug a removable memory stick.

If you click on the Folders button on the toolbar you will change the left hand side so that the dialogue looks like this:

The Folder list view let's you see more of the filing structure in your computer and makes it easy to navigate around.

Now that we have the Folder List open let's explore what's on the Hard Drive (C:). Click once on the little + plus sign to the left of the C: drive in the Folder List.

This will expand the drive structure and let you see the folders that are on it.

Note: This is the structure on my computer and I will demonstrate how to work through my folders. Your computer will likely have very different folder names depending on how it was set up or what special folders have been created. The next few steps are demonstration only to show you the sort of thing you may see if you work through the folders on your own PC.

You will see the various folders on the C Drive. Again, notice that the once called George has a little plus beside it

Now I will expand the folder called George by clicking on it's little + sign.

Notice:

1. That the George folder now has a little minus - sign. If you click on this the sub-folder structure of George will collapse back to what it was before you clicked the +

2. You will see also that some of these sub folders have a + beside them. Guess what - that means that they too have sub folders

3. You will see that the sub folders are listed in the right hand window pane as well. A folder can contain sub-folders and also files.

As you drill down through the folders you will see the sub-folders and files contained in the folder you have selected.

In the following dialogue I have expanded the George folder, then the ww folder within it, then the 140306_files folder within that and then the webmail_date-03 folder under that. Now look in the right hand window and you will see the individual files within that folder.

As you can see I have created folders for particular uses and types of files. The folder called Access Files contains my Microsoft Access database files.

On older Windows versions you have two ways of drilling down through your folder structure like this. You have the simpler My Computer or the more complex Windows Explorer. (NO, this is not Internet Explorer which you use to find stuff on the web!!)

When I changed to the Folders view by clicking on the Folders button at the start of this demonstration, I changed to something which is very similar to Windows Explorer and I would suggest that you use this rather then My Computer. With My Computer you do not see the Folders list at the left and need to use a Back or Forward or Up button or the Folders drop down to navigate. Sound complicated? Well, not really but the Windows Explorer gives a better overview.

Filing using My Computer (Windows 2000)

Here is the Windows 2000 version of My Computer. Both th My Computer and Windows Explorer screens lookI will briefly go through the various screens in this version, but you will see that, although they may look a little different, they follow basically the same procedures.

As you can see it has most of the same items as the XP version. To drill down into the folders of a drive, double click that drive to open it.

This will show you the folders and files on that drive. Double click a folder to drill down through its contents. Again you can then double click folders at this level until you find the file you want.

Filing using Windows 2000 Windows Explorer

To find Windows Explorer in Windows 2000 and before, click on the Start button, then thel Programs option, and you should find Windows Explorer in the list of programmes on your PC. Just click Windows Explorer for a view similar to the Folders view above. The two then work in the same way so you can see the similarities with the graphics above.

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