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Here you may see the naming conventions I use for my files, this is here just as a guide to get you started on your own system. I set many of these conventions many years ago, but they work. Experience has given me newer ideas, some of which I am currently using.

This guide is included as part of the Windows Guides File Organization series. Please visit the main page if you would like to learn why this guide may be useful.

Photo Files

I archive my photos in the following way: Photo > %Year% > %Date%&Title
An interpretation of the above is displayed in the following screenshot:

Yearly Archives

Individual Events

Photos in Chronological Order

As you can see, I have my Photos folder, the Year (2008), and the

Date and Title. This helps me organize my photos without renaming any pictures that come from the camera. This way the photos stay in chronological order, without sorting by date.

Documents

Even though you can sort files by date in all popular OSs, I still append a date to the front of a file. This helps me with versioning and I usually remember when I wrote something, and not what I called it.

Document Folders in Chronological Order

Documents in Chronological Order

Music

Everyone names their music differently, this is my way (but I’m not an MP3 tag person, so I would probably use this for inspiration and not instruction.)

The following screenshot shows my basic structure: Music > %genre% > %album_title%

Music by Genre

Albums within Hip Hop

All individual songs that I buy separately go into the genre folder, along with any albums that are in their own folders. Tags essentially do the same thing, but when you have over 100 albums (or 1000s as may be the case), it helps to do some organization within your file structure.

What organization techniques do you use? If you don’t have a system, make one today!

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