Where did that file go?

Getting Organized

by Lee Alexander

“A messy desk is the sign of a busy worker” should not apply to your computer.

What is a file? It is a digital entity stored on your computer. The key word here is STORED. An entity, be it a document, a spreadsheet, a photo, or a piece of clipart, does not persist as a FILE until you save it. Working on such an entity in an application (such as a word processor or spreadsheet program) keeps your work in RAM (Random Access Memory). If you turn off your computer, intentionally or due to a power failure, without “saving it as a file,” that work is gone. Okay, so we save it, but where? Beware of defaults such as Save buttons and keyboard shortcuts such as <Ctrl> S for an initial save operation. It will save the file, but do you have any idea where? Microsoft's Word is smart enough to bring up the Save As dialog box for an initial save; however, a better habit is to use the function key F12 to bring up the Save As … dialog box until you are confident of the default location for that particular file.

We want to store the file in a “retrievable place,” a physical location in your computer. That “place” is one of your drives. Think of the hard drive(s), floppy drive, CD-ROM, CD – R/RW, Zip drive or any other non-volatile memory as a File Cabinet. If the drive is partitioned, consider the partitions as Drawers in the File Cabinet. Throwing files into drawers in a jumbled mess is like saving all your receipts and tax papers in a shoebox. The information may be there but how do you find the relevant piece of data? Enter the concept of FOLDERS – by creating meaningful named Folders, you reduce the amount of data you must sort through to get to that important fact.

A very useful feature of computers is the ability to create folders within folders – subfolders. My Documents – that all-encompassing “shoebox,” is okay if you compartmentalize it. By creating a folder named Finance and sub-folders, Bank and Investments, you can sort your documents according to their purpose. The Bank folder could be divided into Checking and Savings folders or into different Bank folders by the names of institutions you deal with. A Health folder with sub-folders of Medical and Dental could quickly point you to relevant spreadsheets at tax time. The nested folders add a good deal of convenience to the all important issue of backing up your data. Whether you write to 1.4 MB floppies, burn 700 MB CDs or 9.4 GB DVD-R's, selecting individual files can be tedious. Being able to drag and drop a single folder with included sub-folders and those important files can encourage good back-up habits.

With the advent of today's massive capacities for inexpensive hard drives (less than 20 years ago, IBM had a 5 M B HD that cost $2000), scanning and defragging can take quite a bit of your time. If you partition that big HD, you could perform those tasks on smaller sections in shorter times. A Windows utility, Fdisk, can fulfill that function but only at a loss of data. This would not be bad for a brand new drive but for one with data on it, you would have to make a full backup to restore erased data. A program from Power Quest, Partition Magic, can create, delete, and resize partitions without any loss of data. It can even move applications and data from partition to partition, intact. The retail price of $70 may seem steep for an infrequently used program, but I would not be without it. Using it, I created six partitions on an 80 GB drive. I chose C:, for the operating system and elements that insist on being in the bootable partition; D:, for most applications such as office suites and utilities; E:, for data; F: for digital photography; G:, for temporary backup; and H: for Internet downloads and miscellaneous items. As you might expect, E: , the Data drive, gets the most workout. Defragging this 10 GB partition goes a lot faster than defragging the entire 80 GB of the physical hard drive.

Microsoft can, at times, overzealously play the role of “Big Brother.” The latest version of Windows operating system, XP, went a little too far (in my opinion) in its default assignment of folders. Noting the trend of multiple users in homes and small businesses is a good thing. However, using predefined defaults and dictating where files are to be stored may not suit your personal preferences. If I am the sole user of my PC, do I really need a same named collection of folders for All Users, Current User, Default User, Lee, and Kilroy? The nesting of folders can be taken a bit too far. In many instances the FULL PATH is too long to show its entirety in a dialog box. How many My Documents and Start Menu folders do you have? Which one do you want to save a file in? It may not be the safest thing to simply delete what you perceive to be duplicate folders. My recommendation is to re-name them to distinguish one from another. You may also consider how many places you need the same shortcut to a file or program.

The tree of folders, shown to the right, gives a snapshot of a possible structure for home management. The Finance, Health, Home, and Vehicles would typically hold spreadsheet files. If you have an advanced spreadsheet program (such as Microsoft's Excel) that creates workbooks with multiple worksheets, you could reduce the folder count by incorporating similar data into one workbook. For example, a single Health workbook could contain the Dental and Medical data as separate worksheets. For a family, you could have individual worksheets for each member or simply use a column of the spreadsheet to identify to which member the data is relevant.

The point is – you can be as general or specific as your circumstances require. I would caution you to not go overboard on sub-sub-folders. The number of mouse clicks to traverse the Full Path to a document can soon become tedious.

We can go a little further in organizing and provide quick visual clues by customizing our folders. The plain-vanilla folder icon that precedes each folder name is not very distinguishing. By right-clicking on the folder and selecting Properties, then the Customize tab, you can change the icon. Clicking the Change Icon button brings up a collection of icons stored in Windows / shell32.dll. This is fine if you are satisfied with one of them as an attention grabber; however, if you wish to be a little more creative, you can devise one of your own.

The ubiquitous Paint program accompanying Windows OS can be used to create custom icons but can be daunting to those not graphically oriented. A simpler program is Icon Editor by Gary Hodder, www.hodder.cc/documents . Here you can start from scratch or copy an existing icon and modify it. One of the simplest approaches would be to copy an icon from Windows' collection in Shell32.dll. You may have a bit of a problem choosing which one to start with. On my computer, shell32.dll contains 1484 icons and no viewer from which to see and copy one to the clipboard for subsequent pasting into Icon Editor. The solution is a freeware utility that every PC should have - Irfan Skiljan's IrfanView. You can download it from www.irfanview.com , in Austria . The new icon could be something as simple as the bland folder from Windows Explorer changed by filling it with a different color – green for $$$ - for example. Once you create your miniature masterpieces, make sure you save them where you can find them in the future, perhaps a folder called My Icons?

The icons are, respectively: Windows' icon number 013, 16 x 16 pixels from Shell32.dll; the like icon at 32 x 32, modified by Icon Editor; and a 48 x 48 version, edited in Icon Editor.