When I learned to code websites, naming and naming conventions was a part of the curriculum. In the code, you need to reference the exact file name with the type of file so that the program can find it. Now that I no longer write my own code, I still use what I learned to name files because it makes them easier to locate later on. Here are my favourite tips and what I do when I search for a file.
Naming conventions
There are three easy ways to link words together when you choose a name for your file. Let me show you with an example. Since I have a file folder for every blog post, containing the images for the post and a copy of the content in a word file, I will take this page as an example.
I simply use the nouns and verbs from the title for my file name: Organize Search Files. File and folder names can have spaces in-between. Coding languages cannot. One of the first things I learned was to name everything in one word. Here is my file and folder name in the three main naming conventions:
camelCase: organizeSearchFiles (The first word starts with a small letter and the other words are all capitalized.)
snake_case: organize_search_files (The words are separated by an underscore.)
hyphenated: organize-search-file (Use hyphens to separate individual words.)
Keep it simple
Why should you use several words at all? And why should you write them out? Isn’t it better to keep it simple and short? If you can, by all means. But what I learned through experience trying to find a file I created even just a day ago is that simple and short do not necessarily go together. If in doubt, keep it as descriptive as possible, no matter how long the name ends up to be.
The more descriptive a file name is the better because you will more likely remember at least a part should you have to search for it later. It also helps if you are as consistent as possible. I always use the nouns and verbs in titles to name the files for my blog posts. And I consistently use the same format:
Folder name: p19-organizeSearchFiles
Image: p19-organizeSearchFiles-ft
Content (Word file): p19-organizeSearchFiles
The p stands for post, the number is the count and the ft stands for “featured” because the image is the featured image for this post. When I have more than one image, I simply add a 2, 3, and so on to the end of the file name. A long descriptive name is much better than a clever short one you won’t remember. Which brings me to the next section.
Find a lost file
What do you do when you know you created a file but you have so many folders and subfolders that you can’t remember where exactly you put it? That’s why having descriptive names for your files is so important. If you pick a clever name or an abbreviation and you do not remember what it was, you will have to wade through a long list of search results to find your file.
In order to search for a file you need to know something about it. This can be a part of the name, or which folder it might be in or what file type it was. I will describe how to search for a file with the File Explorer on Windows. If you use a Mac, take a look at this blog post or use the principles I am sharing here.
Let the search begin
First, open your File Explorer. You will see a small search window in the right corner with the search icon next to it. You can type the file name or any part you remember in there. Before you do, notice what is written in the search bar because that is the only place the explorer will search!
When I open my file explorer, it says “Search Home” in the search bar. “Home” in the case of my laptop means any file that is stored on my laptop. If I am looking for a file that is in the cloud, the file explorer cannot find it because the cloud is not part of “Home”.
So before you type anything into the search bar, always go into the folder you suspect the file to be in. This can be one of the big folders, like Documents if you know it is one of the documents you created, or Music, if it is a music file and so on. Go as far down into folders as you can because the less folders the search function needs to go through, the faster you get results.
If I cannot remember what folder my file is in, I still go down to folders where it might be and search them one by one because that is faster than having my entire laptop searched. There are a lot of files on our computers.
File types
You can also search for a file extension, that means the type of your file. For example, if you know you are looking for an image file you can look for “png” or “jpg” or “gif”. This will give you all the image files of the same type in the folders you selected, so you want to go down into your folders as far as possible first.This method works well if you know roughly which folder your file is in but you can’t remember anything about the file name.
Once you found the file, rename it! You forgot the name once. Chances are you might forget again so choose a descriptive name for your file. Don’t worry about the length. The search function only needs a part of the name to find it for you.
Prevention is the easiest way to make sure you always keep your files in reach. Choose the naming convention that jumps out at you, pick descriptive names and familiarize yourself with the types of files you use often. And when you do need to find a misplaced file, you now know what to do.