Numbering folders or files

Do you remember the Y2K bug? Estimated cost of changing a year from 2 digits to 4 digits before the clock ticked over to the year 2000 was about 100 billion USD according to Google research. Lesson learnt. Plan to grow.

Numbers: use multiple digits for numbers i.e 01, 02… 12 if using to organise folders or files.

• Accessibility rule: numbers are used to convey and display sequential order and bullets are used for unordered lists. For example, step 1, step 2 is an ordered list. milk, bread, cheese is unordered list.

• If less than 100 use 01, 02, 03… 22 etc.

• Hundreds: 001, 002, 003… 555

• Thousands: 0001, 0002, 0003,

• If you need to order manually by numbers and don’t know what will be added in later or in which order, recommend going up by increments of 5. i.e. 05, 10, 15. Then if you need to add in between you can slot that folder in. i.e 05,06, 10,11,12, 15.

• Corinne’s preferences.

  • I use a dot after my numbers to seperate i.e 01. Business 02. Operations 03. Strategic plans

  • I only number my top level folders to order by most used.

Naming and organising folders

Suggestions for organising and naming folders and files.

Creating a folder structure and keeping your files digitally organised for work and home can be tough. The following are ideas only but they have worked for me after years of working on accessibility requirements, websites, databases, attending computer workshops, trial and error, research and frustration with working across multiple projects and systems.

Tips

• Use sentence case for all folder names and headings unless a proper noun.

  • Why: Government and corporate organisations are enforcing this rule as it makes it easier for people to read which is good accessibility practice.

• Be consistent. i.e use sentence case for all folders and file naming.

• Aim not to duplicate. i.e don’t have the same folder name in multiple places.

• Keep like with like and plan to grow. Think of a super market and how it is ordered in aisles, sections, categories, items/brands

  • Aisle = cleaning products

  • Sections = laundry, bathroom

  • Categories = powder detergent, liquid detergent etc.

  • Items = Omo, Cold Power etc. (not an ad for these brands)

• Keywords to the left:

  • Think how will this be filtered and what happens if I have over 30 files. i.e if everything starts with the word ‘Meeting’ or a date then it is harder to see what you want. Search engines for the past years have put priority on the first words in a heading or file name.

  • Google naming conventions recommend keeping keywords short and use common simple language.

  • Drop the little words like and, for, the, etc.

• Breadcrumb keywords last becomes first

  • Corinne’s suggestion: In naming files and keeping with the keywords to the left, I would suggest starting with the final keyword first when naming files i.e. This is current good practice for search engines to find your files, makes the keyword semi unique, means all your files don’t start with the same word like cleaning.

    • File name = Omo powder detergent marketing campaign 2019.pdf

    • Subfolder = Laundry

    • Parent folder = Cleaning products

• Versioning and a draft folder.

  • Corinne’s preference: I still prefer to keep multiple versions of documents as I am working on them due to having experienced corruption of files and automated history rollback not working. I have a Draft subfolder and keep all older versions of my files in that with the resources.

  • I use V1, V2 as my naming convention at the end of a document.

    • Some organisations insist the version number is removed from the final document. When uploading to a website or updating a file on a website keep the same final name as links can break if you change any text. With team sharing and saving to a server or the cloud keeping the version number can help with document collaboration and ensuring everyone is working on the correct document unless your team are good at working on one document version only.

• Seperate business and personal.

• Dash vs underscore

  • On phones and tablet devices it is easier to type a dash than an underscore. (give it a go, see if you can find the underscore on your phone)

  • In the accessibility training I was told that some screen readers do not read underscores well. (Vision Australia)

• Using spaces when naming a file or a document. To space or not to space that is the question.

  • Corinne’s preference: In the old digital days, i.e 3 years ago you could not have spaces in your folders or file names stored on websites or servers etc. Now most content management systems I have worked with like Adobe’s AEM, WordPress, Squiz, Squarespace can manage spaces in file names, though it still seems to be good practice to upload a file to a website or intranet as all lowercase and no spaces. However cloud based storage like Microsoft OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive and Microsoft Teams, sentence case naming with spaces seems more acceptable and is easier to read, organise and manage.

Folder structure examples

My old business folder system was organised by clients and projects along with technology, admin etc. As my business grew, clients and systems started to overlap and I started to find it frustrating as to where to save my marketing material, or invoice etc. Most of these folder names I had for years. I made a tweak after reading Work Smarter Not Harder by ?. A fantastic book. I changed my folder name Admin to be Operations and Goals to Strategy. This minor change made all the difference as I pulled all client sub-folders in to operations and started using shortcut links.

1. Business development

   1. Proposals

      1. Statements of work

   2. Contracts

   3. Presentations

   4. Marketing

      1. Social media

      2. Brochures

2. Training programs

   1. Mental wellbeing

   2. Digital

      1. Manuals

   3. Time management

3. Operations

   1. Finance

   2. Images

   3. Video

   4. Licences

   5. Contacts

   6. Templates

   7. Style guides

4. Projects

   1. Project 1

      1. Correspondence

      2. Presentations (includes short cut link from Business development)

      3. Draft

   2. Project 2

5. Management

   1. Clients

   2. Staff

6. Speaking

7. Strategy

   1. Strategic plans

   2. Yearly goals

   3. KPIs

Naming a file

Short cut links to folders and files

Don’t have multiple copies instead create short cut links to folders and files.

• Right click the folder or document

• Go to location where you want to that folder or file to virtually appear.

• Right click select past as short cut

For mac you need to

1. Select the folder you want to create a short cut link from.

2. Select File.

3. Select Make Alias.

4. A shortcut folder will be created.

5. Then move that alias (shortcut link) folder to the location where you want it to appear.