Your Computer Filing System?

Just as a matter of interest how do you keep your files orderly and relatively easy to find? (I warn you this is going to be an entry of Realist proportions.)

My personal system is one I have been using for many years (and which I copied from someone else) but I find it works well. When I started it I had a lot of catching up to do so initially it took me many hours to convert to this system but once started then it is easy to continue with.

The system works for spreadsheets, text files, Word documents, Powerpoint (virtually any type of file) and photos and the basic premise is common to both though obviously they are kept in different libraries.

The hardest thing with a Windows based computer is that the computer sorts character by character - ie it doesn't look at a number as a whole. For example a list of numbered file names say 1 3 20 99, 100, 2019 would be sorted thus:

1, 100, 20, 2019, 3, 99

The way to overcome this is by adding leading zeros in this case to get the correct order you would need numbers:

0001,0003, 0020, 0099, 0100, 2019

Dates are a particular problem for example

20-07-2019 would end up before 21-02-2017.

OK that's the problem here is my current solution.

Dates are entered YYYY MM DD that way they are always in order for example 2017-02-21 comes before 2019-07-20

Get the idea? Photos are usually the most important by sheer numbers. So with photos they are in a folder for each day as automatically done by my photo manager Google's now abandoned Picasa and each photo has a date and number followed by a brief description of the subject:



I also add the camera ID to each folder but that is not necessary.

BTW for Photos Bulk Rename Utility is an absolutely essential free program which will rename multiple photos at a single click of a button (it gets the date taken from the photo itself and adds the correct number of zeros in a series).

Likewise with other files for example Word Documents:





With document files I know that there will never be two on the same date or the information text will be different so a number is generally not necessary. VBA or a Macro can do this job for you automatically. I am not always consistent and sometimes the date is 20181212 other times 181212 but most of the time not in the same folder

Anyway that is my system but what system do you have for keeping your files and photos manageable?

Re: Your Computer Filing System?

Mine are just there somewhere Bruce.

Re: Your Computer Filing System?

Was going to say the same LD I didn't even think of organising anything they just hang around where ever they land.

Re: Your Computer Filing System?

I love Picasa and was sad when Google stopped supporting it. However it is still available to use in an unsupported manner. I installed it on my new PC and use it today.

My filing is not as scientific as yours but for photos i have a folder for every year and one for every month. Most pics go into their month folder. If we have a significant event then i make a folder named after the event and pop it in the year folder. Works quite well.

For photos though if you use Google photos there is more or less no org needed and you can search on anything - beach, kids, food, dog etc and it will find anything from your 1000s of pics. I think its very clever.

Re: Your Computer Filing System?

Do you leave your photos with names like IMG4567.jpg or P23456.JPG? When I first bought a digital camera that's how mine were but I soon realised I needed some way of finding specific pictures so I started giving them descriptive titles.

That was OK but then Windows Explorer messed up the order to alphabetical unless you left IMG4567 at the beginning of the name so that was what I started to do. It was only when I 'discovered' Bulk Rename Utility that I set about renaming every picture to the format I use now. It took a few hours because I didn't have a consistent pattern to my original renaming.

BTW Do you back up your photos? and do you delete them from the SD card? (just being nosey now)

Re: Your Computer Filing System?

I suppose I don't have that many photos compared to other people so I tend to just leave them with their original IMG names although I do sort them into files with certain names like India, cats, house etc so I suppose I do sort them to a certain extent. I don't tend to delete pics from my camera but just buy a new card when it's full.

Re: Your Computer Filing System?

Like you I also create special folders for events for example the month I spent recently in Malaysia I created a folder and then moved the appropriate Picasa created folders into that. By naming the folder something like "2018-10 Malaysia Holiday" keeps the folder in sequence.

I agree with you Picasa is really useful, I have it on all my computers. I even use it for transferring photos from the camera to computer though it is very slow when there are a lot of phots on the card during a during a holiday trip.

I really like its basic but effective photo editing capability and most of my uploads to this forum are now exported after editing that way - I don't care about the loss of quality. My blog photos are also created and exported the same way.

Though I have never used the Picasa 'tag' facility and I have face recognition turned off I wonder it that was a sensible decision and I also no longer use Google Photos mainly because I think Google knows enough about me. I used to use Photos predecessor when it worked with Picasa but only for selected pictures for use in this forum.

It would be nice if Google released the code into the public domain like M$ did with Open Live Writer but I suppose there are already several similar open source products like Irfanview so they probably wouldn't bother. (actually not sure if Irfanview is open source)

Re: Your Computer Filing System?

I use photobox to keep them online, that puts them in date order automatically. Then I print them into physical paper form and put them in my wooden box I use to keep all my memories in or I put them in scrap books with the year written on the front. That means I can write a bit next to them like where we were and what was happening. I guess they are on my computer somewhere but after I've used them in those ways I rarely return to them.

Re: Your Computer Filing System?

Out of interest what "editing" do you do with Picasa? It's red eye removal is the best I've found in a freebie but the rest I've never really used. (Even my 17 year old with all her apps and smart phones can't remove red eye as well as me and Picasa!!! )

Re: Your Computer Filing System?

If I need to know the date of a file (such as the date of a forum post I am saving or the date of a photo) then yep, I just use YYYY-MM-DD and ensure to use leading zeros.

Generally though for photos I'm not interested in the date they were taken. I'm more interested in what the photo is and thus I create folders for different categories of pictures.

e.g. Holidays (with sub folders for each holiday)
Family
Birds
Dashcam footage
Bread
Cars

etc etc