File Management | tips and free software

Here are a few tips I put together to help me organize my files.

Dealing with the amount of files we do it can very easily get out of hand and you can end up with a desktop full of icons it can be difficult to see the woods through the trees. I’d like to introduce you to a few windows xp hints and plugins that you may not know about.

1. When you have big messy pile of files on your desktop If your anything like me sometimes I find it difficult to know what to delete and what to keep. Create a ‘DMZ’ or BIN folder in the root of your messy desktop, drag and drop everything that you think you don’t need into it but may need in the future. This is like throwing everything under the bed, when you have time deal with it later but at least you will have a clean desktop, and it will make you feel better.

2. Use your desktop for work in progress and periodically file completed projects and documents away.

3. Don’t create folders that only hold one or two files (or worse yet empty folders), instead name your files with relevant names so that you can easily find them.
software to help:

Oscar’s File Renamer
http://www.mediachance.com/free/renamer.htm

Remove Empty Directories
http://www.jonasjohn.de/lab/red.htm

4. Use Show In Groups

Most users are familiar with the ability to display folders and files using Tile, Icon, List, Thumbnail, and Detail views. They can be easily changed using the View menu or the Views toolbar button. Many users are not aware there is another view called Show in Groups. Right click in the main Explorer pane, select Arrange Icons By and one of the options will be Show In Groups. ( Note: The Show in Groups option will not be available if List View is selected. Some say this is by design, others say it’s an XP bug) Once Show in Groups has been selected the files will be sorted by alphabetical headings.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/file_management_in_windows_xp.htm

5. Dealing with large video files I find it necessary to delete a lot of large files if you have a lot of large files in different places on your computer these tools can help.

List large files
http://www.delphiforfun.org/programs/Utilities/list_large_files.htm

Add a column to Windows Explorer that tells you the size of your folders.
http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/

hope this helps some of you.