Organizing Windows - The 'My Documents' Edition

Why do you want to create sub-directories (or sub-folders) in your 'My Documents' directory? How many files do you have there? Do you have a bunch of images from that brand new digital camera? Scanned documents? Word files? Excel files? Hard to find what you are looking for these days? Then organize your files into folders that make sense for you. If you are a project oriented person, then use project folders. If you are a application oriented person, then you may want to have separate folders for Word, Excel, Pictures, Scans, etc. depending upon your needs. But a huge jumble, all together in your 'My Documents' folder gets OLD really quickly. Here's how...

The images you see are links to full size views of a typical Windows98 My Documents directory. Some of the images are rather large (ALT text proclaims the sizes).

First, to the left, you see a window which is a view of a sample My Documents directory (filled with garbage, actually, but useful for demonstration purposes). The first step you want to take is shown in the image - go to the view pull-down menu and select List, to get the view of files as shown in the image.

Next, to the right, above, you see the result of clicking on the right mouse button while the pointer is in the open space in the directory listing window. This is called a context menu - that is, it lists things that you can do in this context. The options available in a context menu are also available from the pull-down menus at the top of the window.

With the context menu, select New, then Folder from the context menu, by moving your pointer to New, left mouse click on New, which opens the sub-menu, then left clicking on Folder. This creates a new folder (aka sub-directory) within the current folder, as shown to the right. The name 'New Folder' is boxed and highlighted, indicating that you can now rename the folder. In this case, I name the folder Pictures. Should you do something else, or somehow not immediately rename the folder, then place your mouse pointer on the folder name, and right mouse button click to bring up the context menu (there's that handy beast again), and select rename from the context menu.

You can see, to the left, the results of the rename operation just completed.

Repeat the above steps as necessary, to create the sub-directories you need for the files you keep in your 'My Documents' folder.

In my case, I am going to group similar file types, rather than organize by project. This is handy, since, as shown to the right, I can use the view menu to arrange the filenames/icons by Type. This will group all the .doc, .jpg, .xls etc. files together. Rather handy for the next step.

Look at the image to the left. You will note that by starting and ending in white space I can select a group of files in one simple operation. In this image, I started by left click/hold (meaning click down ONCE and hold the button down) in one corner, then dragging the dotted line box out to the size necessary to mark all of the .jpg files that I plan on moving. Once the files to move are highlighted, then release the left mouse button. Select something you didn't intend? Then left click in the whitespace somewhere to release the selection set, then try again. You can also do groups - you don't have to move all of your files in one fell swoop. Do it in easy chunks, or even one at a time if you are *REALLY* bored.

Then you left click and hold on any of the highlighted files, and drag the whole lot (shown as moving in outline in the image to the right), until you are over the folder you want to move the files into, indicated by the folder name being highlighted. You may, of course, open another window into the destination folder itself, then drag from one folder window to another. There are many ways to skin this particular cat.

You will note in the image to the left that all of the .jpg files are gone. That's all right, because, as you can see from the pointer and the highlight that we are going to open the picture directory and see that all of our .jpg files are preserved, but now I don't have to find them scattered in among all of my other files. Left click (double or single, whichever way you have your system set up) to open the directory. To the right, you see the results. Once you start this process, keep it up. When a directory becomes so full that it is unwieldy, then create sub-folders to further organize. For instance, at work, I have the following directory tree to get to a particular drawing -

D:\My Documents\cad\acad97\Gruber\27179\current\27179a0.dwg

Thus I know that if I want to look at a design I did for Gruber, I look within that subdirectory of my cad/acad97 folder, then in the correct partnumber folder, and inside the current (keeping historical revisions separate). A lot of structure, but then again, I have nearly 500 megabytes of active files on my work system.

Whatever system works for you, use it. But then, USE IT! Good Luck, if you have feedback or questions, feel free to drop me a line at [email protected]. Hope this helps.

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