Organizing your files…a beginning
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008What a can of worms this is.
I’ve had this topic on my list for quite a while and have never been satisfied with how to start the conversation. File management or the lack thereof is a preference of the most personal order. Let me start with a few a my favorite tricks for managing files and folders on the Windows side. Then we’ll open up the comments box for suggestions from our colleagues.
Most of us have become very comfortable with saving our work somewhere in the ‘My Documents’ folder. Hopefully you have subdivided the clutter into course folders, committee folders, and professional and personal interest folders that aid in locating a file when you need to return to it. It’s not necessary to create special folders for PowerPoint presentations or PDFs because Windows explorer will allow you to sort your files by type and arrange them in groups if you like.
If you’re looking for something you did last week or four semesters ago, display the contents of your folder in the detail view, arrange your files by ‘modified’ and turn on ‘Show in groups’ to automatically organize your files into smaller sections labeled Today, Yesterday, Last week, Two weeks ago, Earlier this month, Last year, Two years ago, and A long time ago.
If you’re looking to free up some space, arrange them by size and move the larger files to a CD or flash drive.
When moving from one folder to another or to an external device use the following tips to transfer multiple files in one easy process.
- Edit: Select All or Ctrl-A to select all files in a folder.
- Click on a file and then hold down the shift key and click on another file down the list to select all files in between the click and shift-click (sort your files first by type, size or date modified to make the most of this technique).
- Click on a file and then hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple non-consecutive files (click again while holding down the Ctrl key to unselect if you make a mistake).
- Drag an imaginary rectangle around a range of files (being careful to start in white space and not on a filename) to select a group of files. Once highlighted you can use the Ctrl-click trick to add or remove files from the selection.
- Once selected use Edit: Move to folder… or Edit:Copy to folder… to transfer the files.
Experiment with the different folder views to see which one work best for you. Pictures are displayed well in the Filmstrip or Thumbnail views. Music files are easy to arrange by Artist or Year. Videos can be sorted by Duration or Dimension (Screen Size).
Use the comment box to add your favorite tips. Perhaps we even create a new Wiki page to help solicit ideas.
If you’re really daring try, Google Desktop and make finding files on your computer as easy as searching the Web. It’s a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, files, music, photo tags, chats, web pages that you’ve viewed, and more.