Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

How do you organise your 'My Documents' folder

(1/11) > >>

brett:
After a few years of collecting and creating documents, the 'My Documents ' folder has started to burst at the seams. I sat down the other day determined to clean this mess up. but how? I dont really want to delete or archive anything, just organise it properly, and keep it organised.

The ideas i had where
1- A to Z folders with everything filed alphabetically
2- folder based on extensions, ie MyDoc folder, MyPDF folder, MyPics folder, MyTXT folder, MyDWG folder
3- folders based on job/client/theme
4- All piled into one folder, and allow a file search program to locate stuff (X1)

Each has its advantage and disadvantage
1 and 2 can be automated, which is appealing, 3 is practical if you can maintain it, and 4 is just lazy but also easy.

maybe some members here can offer their wisdom. especially if they use 1 or 2

Brett

TucknDar:
I'm listening in on this one...

I've started using tag2find a bit, but not extensively yet, but it might be a reasonable solution. Tagging, I mean. Then you could leave the docs in a mess, but still easily locate them. Personally I place docs in any related folder, i.e. work, studies -> subject -> year, hobby... etc. I think tagging could be ideal for me.

justice:
I'm opting for 3. Unfortunately it clashes with Microsoft's idea, as My Pictures and My Music is not sorted by project or theme. That's more no2 thinking.
so I have a folder called Projects which contains project files, and Administration. Most of the things fit in here. The key for me  is not to make another folder for only 1 file or one folder, only if you can no longer maintain the current hierarchy.

jgpaiva:
I use a similar method to TucknDar's.
I keep my scripts ordered by project (each with its own folder) in the scripts folder.
Then, i keep my other (very small) projects and attempts ordered by language (java, cpp, etc).
As for school stuff, i keep it ordered by year -> semester -> subject.

Images are sorted in folders, by year and by place (for example: 2007-Italy).

mouser:
I do something that i find useful and could be combined with whatever other approach you take.
I like to keep separate the subdirectories that are automatically created for me by programs and those subdirectories i create myself.

So for example i never actually put my file in the MyDocumentss folder.  I leave MyDocuments alone and i create a MyDocs folder for my stuff.

That means I have a MyDocuments folders, which is full of directories created by programs when they install, etc., and then I have a MyDocs folder which is all my real stuff.  I find this makes it easier for me to isolate my "real" files from files created by programs which I don't really care about.  Note that this means that the "default" folder used by programs to store stuff is not going to be the MyDocs folder so this solution is only good for people who dont mind changeing where programs you really use store there stuff, etc.  i.e. don't do this unless you know what you are doing.

I do a similar thing with:

* C:\Program Files <--- here is the folder used by all normal installer programs
* C:\ProgramFiles <--- i created this for any programs that DONT have installers, which i create manually; this helps me easily identify programs which i manually "installed" and keep them distinct from programs with their own installers, and has been a great help
* C:\Programs <--- some old programs have installers and dont like long paths with spaces, i created this directory for those.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page