Tips To Keep Your Windows Folders Organized

 Tips To Keep Your Windows Folders Organized

 I used to wonder how disorganized I am looking at my Downloads folder
or the desktop. Even on a fresh install it would only be a matter of
days before both of these would get overcrowded and all messed up.

Maintaining an organized computer requires a fair bit of discipline.
That said you can use some of the following tips to make the task just a
little bit easier. These, coupled with a desire to keep things
organized can go a long way in helping you arrange files and folders
nicely.

Group Content In An Unorganized Folder

As one of the first measures, it really doesn’t take more than a
right click and you can set the items to display in groups. Grouping
lends the folder some organization. You can choose to group by name,
size, type etc.


I usually prefer grouping them by type for the simple reason that
somehow the type of file sticks with me longer than its name. Its not
rare when you download a video file to view later then forget about it,
then it comes to your mind but now you don’t remember its name. However,
you still know it’s a video file so you can look around for one if you
have grouped items in a folder by type.

Use Libraries

It’s one of the greatest additions to Windows 7. Something which
perhaps you couldn’t have written on your wish list, but seeing it in
action makes you wonder how you managed without it this long.


Libraries let you view content from multiple folders consolidated
into a single view which is called – well a library. So you can have
things arranged into different folders all neat and tidy, if you want to
view them as if they were in one folder create a new library and add
those locations to it. The above tip to group items in a folder still
applies to the libraries, but now you have an added advantage that the
content is already organized into different folders and you don’t have
to mess with it only to view them under a single name.

Digital Janitor Or Belvedere

Libraries are all fine and dandy if you have say your music in
different folders, you can still maintain the folder structure and view
all music as if they were in a single folder. However what about folders
like the “Downloads” folder? It just keeps on growing. No matter how
hard you try, there comes a time when it gets the better of the
cleanliness freak in you. To rescue you from such situations you can use
a couple of software solutions:

Digital
Janitor can watch a folder for you and then organize the contents
into different folders according to the file extension. Download and run
Digital Janitor and it lets you specify the rules that would be used to
move and organize the files. Rules are nothing but instructions as to
which filetype should end up in which folder. With the rules set you can
relax as any file that lands in the monitored folder will be dispatched
to its righteous place according to the rules you defined.


Created by the folks over at Lifehacker, Belvedere
solves the same problem as Digital Janitor does but offers you finer
control over the rules. So if the simple “move files according to
extensions” doesn’t cut it for you, give Belvedere a try.

Use A Download Manager

Moving on to organizing the downloads folder, you can use download
managers to do some work for you. Leave aside all the acceleration they
lend to your download speeds, I am talking of their organizing benefits.
Most download managers maintain a history of locations where you have
been storing your files. Now in the “Too much mess” situation you would
only have a single location in your download manager as well and we
would still be at square one. What I have been doing for some time is to
create a folder structure (perhaps in the downloads folder) that would
keep things nicely organized.

As an example you could create folders like d_setups, d_archives,
d_torrents (or anything that suits your need). Now the first time you
download a software setup, archive or a torrent file, you would have to
tell your download manager to use these locations. However, from the
next time, all you have to do is to click on the drop down list and
choose the appropriate location according to whatever you are
downloading.


Upside: I trust my judgment more than my computer’s.

Downside: Requires two extra clicks which can be two
too many for some people!

Manage Archive files Better

Archives are the preferred way to package files for transfer. As a
result you find them everywhere – email attachments, source code
packages, software bundled inside zip or rar files and what not. A
common problem this creates is that the archive file continues to stay
on in the folder even after the contents have been extracted. It might
be useful to have the archived version in certain cases, but most often
that is not the case, so the obvious solution would be that you either
delete the archive or the extracted contents. The problem is it can be
hard to find which archives have been extracted and which not. In such
cases you can either:

• Delete the archive as soon as you have extracted
  the contents.

• or use wildcards in search to find which archive files have
  already been extracted and then get rid of them. eg searching
  for organic* would list organic_design folder as well as
  financial_docs.zip file. So you know that you have already extracted
  organic_design.zip and you can go ahead and delete it. Linux (Gnome)
  users can use Ctrl + s inside nautilus and then specify the pattern.
  Similar files will then be highlighted in the nautilus window. Keep in
  mind that this assumes that the archive file contained a similarly named
  folder or file which is the case very often though not always.