Naming your computer files like a Pro

I remember managing an East African Project under the auspices of Aga Khan University. Being in charge of a program covering six nations, 14 professional and regulatory bodies was quite a task. These professional bodies supported their membership, who were in excess of 150,000. My role was to strengthen their capacity to run their day-to-day activities and members’ affairs. Essentially entailing proper trailing of each membership details, documents responding to all electronic and physical communication. This is the point in my career life I realized that a good information system starts with professional naming of documents as well as proper filing in folders and drives.

We have all been there: you are asked to review the most recent draft of a document. You log in to your organization’s shared-folders and look for the file, but you cannot tell which version of the document you should be reviewing. Since then I am passionate about file naming and other information management tactics because the more organized you can be with managing your documents, the more effective and efficient you can be in your school or career.

Why you need to name your document

Your consistency in document and folder naming will always be your most powerful and easy method for organizing and retrieving your documents. You want to get this right the first time, so it is important to invest enough time to think about this carefully.

The overall goal of intentional document and folder naming is to increase readability and access. It empowers people new to the content to navigate documents more easily, makes searching and finding documents easier by having your documents and folders reflect contents, and guides file authors to develop each document around a single, concrete purpose, which reduces untidiness. More concretely, it allows you to:

?          Know the content of a document without opening it.

?          Retrieve and filter documents very quickly using the search/filter function of your computer.

?          Store documents in a single folder without losing their context, if you need to.

?          Find and identify documents even if they are no longer in their original folder.

?          Easily browse long lists of files to inventory or check for missing documents.

?          Manage documents more easily for school or work

Back to my former organization. To be able to organize tonnes of reports, research documents, organization documents I had to spend a week learning how to do proper naming and filing documents. As a lecturer, in addition, I noted that to manage all the students work; projects, assignments and records, naming and labelling of documents may stand between you and your success. Please go through with me some of the lessons I have pulled from my work. I hope this can be a revelation for you as you explore this topic.

Step 1: Start with the end in mind; How will you want to retrieve your documents

This aspect determine the right document naming convention for that file type. Keep in mind that file sorting will read from left to right!

a)        Starting your filename with the most important parameter/component will allow you to organize documents alphabetically (or chronologically) with that parameter without having to do any searching. For example, if your primary method of accessing students work is by course name or title, then this should be the first element in your file naming convention: when you sort your documents in the file manager, you will see them in the order of courses.

b)        For dates, use DDMMYYYY. To ensure that files are sorted in proper chronological order the most significant date and time components should appear first followed with the least significant components. This practice will allow us to sort by year, then month, then date and vice versa.

c)        Versioning: You may decide to position your specific document among several versions. . If the document will be maintained over time, use the convention v1, v2, v3, etc. to depict its place in the sequence of versions. You may want to separate the “v” from the content type with an underscore (“_”). As versions are made and updated, change the version #, but keep the file name the same.

d)        Sequential numbers: Make sure that, if there are going to be more than 9 files with that name (versioning, photos), it should be 01, 02, 03, so that it can be sorted in chronological order. Same if it is more than 99 files, it should be -001, -060,-099,-100

Step 2: Use appropriate components in your document name to provide description and context

Your document should contain the essential elements dependent upon what is suitable for your retrieval needs. Documents names should outlast the records creator who originally named the file, so think about what information would be helpful to someone in 15 years. Potential components for documents include;

a)      Name of organization

b)     Program or theme

c)      Type of document

d)     Geographic scope

e)      Date or period

f)      Language of document

g)     Content type, such as “Attachment Report”. This will help to maintain consistency of filenames across program areas and staff.

Some of the components I picked in my previous examples that captures this aspect of components include;

[04122016]_[Strengthening Prof Bodies] _[Tanzania_TAMA]_[Satisafaction Survey]-[006].V1

For an academic program an example would be

08052020_HSMU 333_Madera County Referral Hosp_Attachment Report_Mohamed Maalim_V2

Step 3: Keep the document name a reasonable length

Long file names do not work well with some types of software so it is best to keep them short. To achieve this, you could consider:

a)        Shortening the year to 2 numbers

b)        Abbreviate file name components (e.g. use “inv” instead of “invoice”, or attach instead of Attachment, Mandera CH instead of Mandera County Referral hospital etc. 

c)        Use as few words as possible to convey the identity of the document

Step 4. Avoid special characters and spaces

Special characters such as ~! @ #should be avoided. Do not use spaces. Some software will not recognize file names with spaces. Use these alternatives instead:

a)        Underscores (e.g. file_name.xxx)

b)        Dashes (e.g. file-name.xxx)

c)        No separation (e.g. filename.xxx)

d)        Camel case, where the first letter of each section of text is capitalized (e.g. FileName.xxx)

Step 5: Document and share your file naming convention, and get your team on-board!

Make it easy on your time to understand, use and find the file naming convention by documenting it and putting in a place that is easy to find. You might want to include this documentation in a readme.txt file in the main shared folder usually available as the footer of your document.

Example of a digital photo file naming convention

Professional photographers also use file naming conventions to organize their photos. A photographer may take thousands photos in a single shoot, and they do not depend on file names produced by their camera, or rely on folder structures. Rather, they typically use a file naming convention, such as: [Date] – [place or event] – [number] – [comment].

Examples:

?          2011.11.11-KeMU-Graduation-000001.tiff

?          2011.11.11-KeMU-Graduation-000002.tiff

?          2011.11.11-KeMU-Graduation-000003.tiff

?          2011.11.11-KeMU graduation-000004.tiff

As you can see, the photos above relate to a graduation ceremony that took place at KeMU on 11 November 2011. They were shot in TIFF format. Even if there are tens of thousands of photos in the same folder, it’s easy to filter for “KeMU” and “Graduation”. Photography software like Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop allows you to batch rename files as above.

Fredrick Kimemia M.Sc FeHSM is a Doctor of Philosophy Student, University Lecturer and Secretary General of Health Systems Management Association (HeSMA)