The Art of the Search, Part II

By Robert Ringer

Unlike the Windows Search effort I discussed in my last article, manually searching Windows Explorer or My Computer begins with how you store a document. Because if you do a good job of storing it, finding it should be easy. There was a simple reason why I couldn’t find my son’s paper: I had stored it in the wrong folder! Doh!

What do I mean by “wrong folder”? In my world, a wrong folder is one that is not a logical place for a particular document to be stored. There is no doubt in my mind that everyone reading this article knows exactly what I mean by this, because every computer user has made this mistake — usually many, many times.

Because I was in a hurry (an open invitation to computer problems), I filed my son’s paper in one of my business folders. For the sake of convenience, I didn’t want to take the time to click a few folders and store it in a
logical one. (Note: This is a direct violation of my cherished Slow, Fast Rule. Taking the time to do things right almost always results in saving time in the long run.)

In my computer, a logical folder would have been “To be transferred,” “Limbo,” or “Temp.” If a file is not going to be a long-term resident of my computer, or if I expect to relocate it at a later date, it gets temporarily housed in one of these folders.

Of course, I had every intention of transferring the document later that evening or the next day — as soon as I found “a free moment.” But who ever gets a free moment? If your brain is anything like mine, you know that thoughts like this make their way into the Lost and Found Cavity of your gray matter very quickly, never to be heard from again.

So, whereas the purpose of Part I of this article was to provide you with a tip that would help you implement an effective Windows Search, the purpose of this article is to help you avoid having to do a lengthy search. It’s so much easier to take a few seconds to store a document in the right folder than to spend forever searching for that document. And, as we all know, from time to time a file can even get lost forever.

There are a hundred tricks to setting up a logical filing system in your computer. If you’re a reasonably sophisticated computer user, you probably already know ninety-nine of them. Even so, allow me to offer just a couple of simple tips.

First, you can place the folders and documents you use most frequently at the top of your list (for easy access) by fooling your computer. By this I mean using prefix letters, numbers, and symbols.

For example, if you want your “Marketing” document or folder to be at the top of your list of files, you can accomplish this by renaming it “!Marketing.” That’s right, an exclamation point trumps “1″ — and, by the way, “1″ trumps “A.” You have to get in there and play with it in order to figure out the best system for your needs.

Second, get in the habit of making and naming new folders — the more detailed, the better. You can do this in Windows Explorer by clicking “File” — “New” — “Folder,” then typing in the name you want to give the new folder. Or, in the “Open” dialog box, you can just click “File” — “Open” — then click the folder icon on the right side of the toolbar at the top of the box and type in the name of the new folder.

If you’ve not spent much time working in this sphere of the computer world, you’ll find that by jumping in with both feet and playing around with it, it becomes very fast and very easy. And you’ll be absolutely amazed at how organized you can make your filing system — and how much time, effort, and grief you can save yourself.

Most important, you won’t incur the wrath of your child, who already sees you as a hopeless boob when it comes to computers. But that’s an article for another day.