Nothing can be more devastating than to misplace an important item. It could be your glasses, car keys, that winning lottery ticket or that all important computer file. Oh yes, it is saved, somewhere on your hard drive, but where?

Similar to your dresser drawer, your computer be organized into various drawers. You’ve got a drawer for socks, one for pants and another for underwear. Another drawer may exist simply for winter sweaters and still another for summer swimwear.

Your computer has drawers also. There is a drawer for your word processing documents, another drawer for games, and still another for the internet. Computer drawers are called folders. Like your dresser, you can maintain it however you wish.

Keep your sock drawer organized and you will be able to find a matching pair quickly when getting dressed. Keep a messy sock drawer and you will spend extra time looking for a matched set. Ever find yourself running late, only because you could not find matching socks or shoes? Going out on a Saturday night and you can’t find your favorite sweater or pair of jeans? It can be very frustrating.

Keep your computer’s drawers (folders) organized and you will quickly and efficiently know where to find your homework assignment, address book, favorite recipe, or copy of last year’s tax return for the IRS.

If you share your computer with co workers or other family members, you do need to keep track of your stuff, your kid’s stuff; personal vs. office stuff and most importantly, installed program stuff vs. your created document stuff. It is not my intent to support a segregated society. There is enough already! But a little segregation in your computer can go a long way. Program files should live in program folders. Your data should live in data folders far away from program files and folders. After all, socks don’t share a drawer with pants and shoes. You would never guys underwear with the gals. Its just not politically correct.

Some people refer to them as directories and sub directories. Old timers call them libraries, while others refer to them as a living tree with a root, branches and leaves. Regardless of the terminology, the concept of folders is what keeps your stuff in line. It can also make or break your ability to find or lose that all-important document.

Your computer knows how to be politically correct. It knows how and when to integrate program folders with data folders to create something of substance, that is your stuff. But when you turn off the computer, program stay with programs and data stays with data. And you thought PC stood for personal computer.

It’s your computer, your wardrobe or closet. You can create your own folders, create your own chest of drawers. Want three drawers, or four? Two large drawers and three small ones? Fine.

Need a divider in your sock drawer to separate black socks from the white ones? You can do this to. You can put folders within folders. You can have a folder for each project, or a folder for each member of your family. You can create folders for each month of the year or one for different years. Designing your little folder wardrobe is easy.

Take a step back to look at your now organized closet. It’s your computer, your chest of drawers. Open Windows Explorer and do just that. Explore. Don’t delete anything-just look around. Open a drawer and look inside. Close it and then open another. Can you see that some drawers have drawers within drawers? These are your computers folders within folders.

If you can do this within Windows Explorer, you can and should do this when saving your work. Who knows, you may even find a new career as a city planner in your local community.

Don’t be too quick to click and save!

If your program asks you for a file name when you save your work, 9 times out of 10 you are given a choice of file name and folder location. Do not accept the default. Know where your stuff is saved so that you can get back to it in the future.

On too many occasions, you or your family members have spent hours working on an important project. It could be for your work or your kid’s term paper. GO ahead, save it! Its one, maybe two mouse clicks away. But when you need to get back to it later, where did it go? Your kids’ homework may have overwritten your work project. Someone needed more room for a new game, so your files, saved just anywhere, were deleted to make more room. It has happened. Know your folder layout. You may not realize where your stuff is located.

Understand the default location for saving files. Every program has a default location!

When you first install a new program, it usually will suggest where it should be installed. If there is adequate room, I will accept the default location. If not, I will look for more space and install the program elsewhere.

These Windows programs also create and define default settings for storing your stuff. These are the default folders where your work will be saved. It’s your work, your creative effort. You should decide where (in which folder or on what street) your stuff should live. You can accept the arbitrary default location suggested by the program or  you can modify the default settings to change the location to where you want your stuff saved.

A few examples

Word processing programs (Word and WordPerfect) have default folders for saving files.  If you accept the default location, make sure you really know where it is. It really could be a folder within a folder, within another folder. It could be three or four levels deep and difficult to find.

It could also not exist at all; whereby the word-processing files can get saved who knows where? Probably mixed up with the word-processing program stuff. The default folder may not have been created or did not exist in the first place. You could accidentally erase the program at the same time you are deleting some old project work. WRONG! I have seen these things happen on countless occasions.

When it comes time to upgrade to a new version, is your stuff saved with the old version? Did you correctly decide to delete the old version? Did your stuff go with it? OOPS!

Downloading from the Internet?

When you download from the Internet, you should be given a chance to choose the folder location where the file will be saved. You can even create a folder on the fly in which to place this little download gem. Hint: Is this download gem free of viruses?

General Tips and Tricks

Creating new Folders

• Creating a new folder is a simple task.

• Open My Computer on your desktop with a simple mouse clock

• Open the hard drive on your system (usually drive C, but possibly drive D or E)

Determine whether the new folder will be located just off the main boulevard (off of the C drive) or whether it will be located within another folder or even a folder within a folder, within a folder. It is OK to nest folders within folders, you just have to remember how many levels up or down a folder exists.

• Click on File, then NEW, then FOLDER.

• Give your folder a name that makes sense for the stuff that will be in it.

The folder ANNA would contain Anna’s stuff. The folder MARY would contain Mary’s stuff. The folder COMPUTER BOOK would contain the documents and information for a computer book. The folder TAX99 might contain stuff relating to 1999 income taxes. The folder TAX98 would contain items for the 1998 income tax.

The choice is yours but you can see the default folder for Windows, MY DOCUMENTS gives you no idea what is really in there. Be creative but do manage your folders.

Change Windows Point of View 

You can learn a lot and gain more understanding about the stuff in your computer by looking at the files and folders from a more advanced point of view.

To really look at your computer, change how the information is displayed. Change Windows point of view:

Separate Your Stuff from Program Stuff

The files you create are "your stuff"  The programs and utilities that you purchase and use to create "your stuff" are "program stuff"  Keep the program information away from your stuff

Files still missing (or just misplaced) ?

Try windows find file utility