Good computer document management techniques keep your documents at your

Good computer document management techniques keep your documents at your fingertips

We all rely on our computers for so many everyday tasks and information storage. Yet it's surprising that many of us have not a clue as to how to organize our directories and files in a logical, orderly manner so as to make finding a particular set of files easy.

Here, we offer some suggestions on good document management techniques which save you time, trouble and data loss. Even if you've already got thousands of files, scattered from here to kingdom come, the situation can be remedied.

Organizing your directories

Let's look at a typical user's files. You may have work-related documents which span years. You've also got household records, such as bank records, taxes, budget spreadsheets, downloads, images, videos and photo libraries. Each of these categories deserves a separate directory. This is essential to good document management.

Think of document management on your computer as you would a physical file cabinet. To make your documents easily accessible, you'd naturally make a separate file folder for all your auto maintenance records, for example. You'd have a separate folder for each year's tax returns and backup documents. At work, you'd create folders for different projects. The same organizational structure applies to good computer document management.

If you've got all of your files in a single directory or several which are not well organized, now is the time to create backup CDs. When all of your files are saved to CDs, create directories for each type of broad document category. For example, you might create a directory for all of your work-related documents, under the name, 'work'. Within the 'work' directory, create folders for each quarter, or month.

Now, with all of your files safely stored on a CD, open two windows under 'my documents'. If you have several folders, open each one and go through each document to see that each is contained in the logical folder. For example, if you've got a 'household' folder that contains everything from your budget to tax documents, you'll make your life easier by creating separate folders for each of those general 'household' designations. This is good document management. Cut and paste files from the 'household' folder to the new, appropriate folder in the other window. When finished, there should be no documents remaining in the 'household' file, only folders of subset documents.

Archive old document folders containing completed projects, such as work or tax records of previous years, by burning to a CD set aside for work. It costs little to have a backup CD dedicated to your archived documents, safe and sound in your well organized and accessible document management 'library'. So long as you store your CDs properly (not in a hot place or exposed to direct sunlight!), you'll have all of your documents available in your archives at any time. Once they're burned to a CD, delete those directories from your computer.

We all download a variety of documents, images, applications and videos. For the sake of accessibility, you should create a directory for downloads, with folders within that directory of each sub-type. This is a document management technique for purely organizational reasons. The name of that language translator you downloaded a year ago may not be on the tip of your tongue today. However, if you've created a directory for downloads, with a sub-folder for 'communication tools', it's a heck of a lot easier to find!

Good document management is, in a nutshell, good organization