I'm constantly harping on everybody to pay attention to their file naming.
I'm a graphic designer, so for me everything is Client/YYMM-Project/_FINAL/YYMM-COLLATERAL-NAME
Within each project there is a _PROCESS folder with a _ELEMENTS subfolder for pieces the client has given me to work with.
For invoices I do YYMMDD-ClientName-Project-Sum.pdf. When the invoice is paid, I rename the file to add -PAID- before the client name. Its simple, but its allowed me to easily track and maintain projects and billing over the years.
If I end up working for another 83 years, I guess I'll pad the year with a 0...
Proper file management is an undervalued skill and should be taught both in school and in corporate environments. In an old tech job we had a public folder on the server that was total chaos. So many people insisted on naming their files MAY-%day%-%contents%-%personsname% -- and, as you'd expect, people spent countless hours per year trying to hunt down that one file so-and-so worked on before they left for another job.
I can't speak to stevewillows' answer, but my girlfriend uses a similar naming scheme in her architecture work. The project folder contains a year-month prefix indicating when the project started, and any year-month prefixes below that indicate when that part of the project was initiated. It maps the project in time for her: this folder tells her when she first talked to the client, this folder tells her when design started, this folder tells her when she got the first construction bids. The date on the top-level folder is extremely useful when looking through old projects. Just from consulting those files so often, she knows when most of her major projects were started and finished and how long each phase took, which is something I don't remember (and can't reconstruct) for most of the projects I've worked on. She has folders like this going back ten years. I can't even imagine what that would look like for my projects. I'm a bit jealous.
Including the year and month on a project file means it can stand independent of it's directory for easy distinction in search, meaning you can find relevant files in a way that is uncomplicated and easy to understand.
[Edit] As dkarl mentioned more elegantly: this system helps map a project in time.
YYMM on project files is shorter and less ambiguous than using a project name for the same function.
I'd imagine the sub-directory underscore is also used to aid searching. You can easily visually identify (or filter) sub-directories.
> The initial underscore helps by (a) keeping those directories sorted [separately] and (b) providing a visual clue that they are 'special'. [0]
Have you considered writing an automatic file syntax check/rename? Reading the thread made the idea pop into my head that it could be a useful tool, especially in fast moving or group environments.
I prefer organizing by year and by category(business, code, etc) instead of by client but overall I'm mostly happy to have any organization of my files at all.
I'm a graphic designer, so for me everything is Client/YYMM-Project/_FINAL/YYMM-COLLATERAL-NAME
Within each project there is a _PROCESS folder with a _ELEMENTS subfolder for pieces the client has given me to work with.
For invoices I do YYMMDD-ClientName-Project-Sum.pdf. When the invoice is paid, I rename the file to add -PAID- before the client name. Its simple, but its allowed me to easily track and maintain projects and billing over the years.
If I end up working for another 83 years, I guess I'll pad the year with a 0...
Proper file management is an undervalued skill and should be taught both in school and in corporate environments. In an old tech job we had a public folder on the server that was total chaos. So many people insisted on naming their files MAY-%day%-%contents%-%personsname% -- and, as you'd expect, people spent countless hours per year trying to hunt down that one file so-and-so worked on before they left for another job.