What is the best way to name your files? Let's find out in today's video.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
You probably already know that the way that you structure your folders is important, but what's so much more important is how you name your individual files so you can go and find them and retrieve them when you need to.
So in today's video, I'm gonna show you three different components that you should include in each of your filenames.
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When it comes to naming your files, there are many different approaches that you can take, but I think you only need three key components, a date, a file subject name, and a unique identifier or some other special code.
So let's take a look at all three of these components, see why they are important, and also look at the different ways in which we can order them.
Here you can see in this example I have a few files that have a date at the beginning and this is great if you are managing files that need to be sorted by a particular date.
Now it's true almost every file system will include a last modified date and also you'll be able to find when that file was first created.
It doesn't matter if you're in Drive like the example I'm showing you here or if you are on a Windows or a Mac computer.
But in many cases, the last time that the file was edited or when it was created is not the most important date so you may want to include something more specific.
I'll give you an example. I give a lot of presentations and so for me I don't care so much as to when it was last modified or when I first created that file.
What I'd like to know is when did I last present that file. When did I actually deliver that as part of a speech or as part of a live workshop?
So I will often include a date at the beginning of those files.
Now we wanna go one step further and make sure that we list our dates in a proper order.
Here you will see I have things listed in year, month and then day order and we're using two digits for both month and day. Now this is really, really important.
This has nothing to do with where I live in the world or the country, whatever date format that your country follows, the reason why we want to follow year, month, day is because it will always sort properly.
As you can see in these first four files here, I'm starting in 2017 and things are sorting properly down to 2018 including at the month and the date level.
And that's always going to be the case if we follow this format.
Now I've seen some people who omit this little dash in between so the numbers are all together. You've got an eight-digit number.
I prefer to have a small dash in between. I just find it that much easier for me to read.
But as I'll be showing you a little bit later on in today's video, you don't necessarily need to start with the date. We'll look at the pros and cons of having that at the beginning of your filename.
Now the second component of this filename includes a subject line and I'm gonna spend very little time here because this really depends on so many different factors as to what does this file include, what's the purpose of this file.
I think the key thing here is that you should be adding a few keywords letting you know and perhaps other people that you may be sharing this file with what exactly should they expect when they open up this file.
In this case, I have labeled this Client_Email_List and you'll also notice that I've added underscores between the spaces within that filename, but also between the date and the unique code or identifier at the end.
This makes it a bit easier to read rather than this one down below where I've had no spaces and I've just got VendorTrainingContract all smashed together.
The reason why underscores are still important in this day and age is that there are some file systems who may replace a space with a funny character.
You may have come across a situation where a filing system has thrown in a percentage sign in between any original spaces or they will try and put in underscores themselves, but if they can't, sometimes they will simply collapse those spaces and the entire thing will end up looking like this with everything jammed together.
So you may want to get used to adding underscores to your filenames. Not only does it make it easier to read here, but as you share your file with others or as other people share them with you, you can keep that proper spacing in between.
And remember, you don't know what type of system where you are sending this file to. You don't know what they are using and so how it may convert the name of your file.
Now the last component here is what I call a unique identifier or a special code. And I've got a few different examples here.
I've got this one which I've labeled draft letting us know that this is the draft version of this particular file.
In the next two, I've added some initials. So here SDF I can see that I am the author or the creator or maybe I was the last person to touch this file so I've got my initials at the end.
Here I've got someone else's initials signifying that perhaps they are the author.
And then I've got one last example here. This one is VER2 as in version two letting me know the version status of this file.
And as you can notice, I've put everything here, this last component in all capitals unlike the subject name itself which is just in regular text.
This makes it stand out that much more that I've put this in all capitals. I can tell that this is a different component or an add-on of that filename.
Now again, you need to decide what it best for you in terms of what makes the most sense. Does putting a version number make more sense to you?
Does having the initials of yourself or someone else, does that make more sense?
Let's take a look at a few other examples down below here. Here you can see I've put the subject name first, then the unique identifier and then the date at the end.
Now the nice thing about this format is that if I have a bunch of contract templates or maybe I have a number of different things that start with contract, maybe this next one is a contract email template and maybe this is a contract paper template, something like that, I know that everything is going to sort properly with contract first within this folder and that may be most important to me.
Here you can see I've got the different version numbers showing up next and then I have the date at the end.
Last but not least, I've got one last revision or different ordering of these three components. In this case, I have the code or unique identifier at the beginning.
I've got the subject name in the middle and then again I've got the date at the end.
And again, this can be great for sorting purposes. In this case, I've got some purchase order numbers and maybe that's what's most important to me or to my team is that we sort in the order of purchase numbers.
So in this case by starting with that code or that unique identifier, it's always going to sort properly here and I still have my other information to the right.
So no matter what you do as a part of your business, maybe you're an educator, maybe these are just your personal files, I would encourage you to include these three components, a date and don't forget that order, the subject name or the filename with some descriptive keywords and then a code or a unique identifier as you can see here at the end or in our examples here at the beginning of the filename.
As it pertains to the precise order, well that's up to you and it may also depend on the folder that you're keeping these files in.
I hope you enjoyed today's video and I would love to learn from you.
What do you think of these three components and do you have some additional ways in which you order your files?
I'd love to hear from you so be sure to leave your answer in the comments below.
I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity YouTube channel. Please give this video a thumbs up and don't forget to leave me a message in the comments below.
Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
