5 File-naming Tips To Stop Your Folders Being Disorganised

Let's face it, most documents these days - perhaps with an exception of our email - are collaborative, done with a team and not on our own. Whether it's a report in Excel, a letter in Word or a PowerPoint presentation to the boss, chances are you've had to run it past more than one person. Problems will arise with every "save" unless you follow some basic organisational rules for file saving and sharing. Here are some to make your life easier.

1. Agree on a shared drive or space - and stick to it

Countless times, if more than one person is working on a document they will forget to save it in its "proper" place. Some people just forget, others don't realise that if they are hitting "save" rather than "save as", it's going to end up in the My Documents folder on their personal PC or laptop instead of the designated shared drive. If you're on a network, put the shared drive there so it's accessed by all. Make sure everyone knows where it is, and that all the revisions have the same file type and file name, as described in more detail below.

2. Make sure each new revision is the same name and type

If you're working on an Excel spreadsheet in Office 2003 at home, and use 2007 at work, using the usual save command will create two different versions - and two different files that don't overwrite each other. The same goes for other anomalies such as the CSV or basic text worksheets n Excel. It also applies to Word, for example 2003 would save as a ".doc" and 2007 will produce the new "docx" format, and they are not truly 100% compatible - your computer will treat them differently. Always save as the version that exists, and don't change the name unless you're sticking to file-naming rules - which brings us onto the next point.

3. Have rules for naming files, and don't deviate

For example, if you called a report "Budget 09-10 version 1", then keep it that way rather than writing 2009-2010 because it's what you think looks better, and decide what exactly supersedes version 1 when it's changed. Will it be version 1a, or 2, or something else? Make sure everyone knows the style - including the spaces and any underscores in lieu of them - or else you'll run into problems.

4. When lots of people are collaborating, include author information in the file name

If, for example, a manager called John Smith was to write the next version of the Budget spreadsheet, he might call it "Budget 09-10 version 2 JS". This gives the rest of the team some good information without opening it - it supersedes version one, and he is the author so if anyone has any queries on what he's added, changed, or taken away from version 1, they know who to ask, rather than laboriously trying to get it back to the unchanged version through guesswork.

5. Remember - communication is key!

In order to be better organised with your files, it all hinges on everyone knowing the file naming styles and rules, and sticking to them. If you make everyone aware of this before "version one" even becomes a reality, you'll pave a problem free path to better file organisation and even better - improved file retrieval when you're against the clock.