Keep Track Of Your Documents Every Day!

By Author: Casey Adams
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Document management is so important when using a computer, whether for work or play! It is mostly important in a business or home office. Here are 3 tips to help you get a handle on things.

1. Save Documents of Similar Type in the Same Location!

There are a couple of approaches to doing this. For example, you may want all your word processor documents (such as those created in Microsoft Word) in one place. Most people save these in their My Documents folder (on a Windows machine).

The other approach, which is superior, is to save your documents in folders according to what they mean to you logically. For example, if you write letters to loved ones using a word processor, put those particular documents in a folder called, Letters. You may choose to create this folder within your My Documents folder or on your desktop.

You'll need to simply right-click the desktop or right-click inside any folder, to create a new folder. Then name it with a name that will always make sense to you, a name that will be easy to remember and find later.

2. Name Your Documents Properly and Consistently

Let's ...
... suppose you are an author and you're saving parts of a book on your computer. You don't want to just name each file with some random wording. The name should contain the book title, chapter number, and chapter title (if the chapter has a title). For example, the title could look like this The Quest - Chapter 1 - A Hunger for Adventure. This way all of your files would be together alphabetically for your book! And they would automatically fall into proper order due to the chapter number.

But it's important that you name every document the same way with the same number of spaces and the same punctuation and capitalization. This helps the computer keep things in order for you and makes it easier for you to locate the file in the future.

3. Manage Your Files and Re-organize

Now that you've established a method to your madness, so to speak, it is also important to intermittently look through your folders and files and make sure you know what's what. If your goals change on what you want to do with certain files, create new folders, rename them (just right-click and choose Rename), or even delete files or folders you don't want or need any longer.

And don't forget to empty your Recycle Bin every so often. The Recycle Bin keeps everything you've deleted in it, in case you need to restore something you accidentally deleted. This takes up a lot of space on your computer, though! The solution is to right-click and Empty Recycle Bin, at least once or twice a month.

However, if you don't like having to do that, you may opt to right-click the Recycle Bin, choose Properties and then manage how much hard drive space (maximum) the Recycle Bin may use. If you set this low enough, you won't have to worry about emptying it so often. But set this cautiously! If you delete a file, like a big song, picture, or video that exceeds the capacity you've set, your computer will delete the file permanently. This removes the ability to undo such a deletion!

There are many ways to manage your documents and keep your computer organized and running efficiently. These are just a few. Once you start good habits, you'll be on track! If you ever wonder how to do something with your computer, just go to a search engine and type your question in! Chances are, someone else has wondered the same thing and a solution has been posted online!
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