Happy Trails Computer Club

Using "My Documents" to organize your files effectively and efficiently

Some programs try to get you to put document files in the *right* place, i.e., the "My Documents" folder. Others try to put them somewhere in their own program folders, e.g., C:\Program Files\GormetCook\Recipes\. Who do they think they are? Frank Sinatra? You can *make* them do it your way most of the time though.

What kind of files do programs generate? I'm not referring to the "program" files that make the program run, but "user generated files." If you write a letter with Microsoft Works and "save" it, Works generates a "*.wps" file, for example, letter.wps, to save your letter. Works offers to save it in C:\Program Files\MSWorks\Documents, but you can save letter.wps anywhere you want. We'll get back to this in a moment.

Before going further, it's best to figure out exactly where want the file to go, given that you plan to back up the file later. You could set up a special place for documents, but why not use the one Microsoft made for you? "My Documents" is designed to be a central location for most of your documents. You might want to create a sub-folder within My Documents called "letters", or use some other scheme, to keep them separate from other kinds of files. See more below.

When you're ready to save letter.wps, click File > Save As and then browse until you find the sub-folder you want in "My Documents". Works (and some other programs) remembers that folder as your preference (until you close Works). Works can be set to save backup copies too. It's good to make them, but I'd consider those to be my working backups, not my *real* backups. The sub-folders of "My Computer" (over at the left) show how I have my documents organized on the computer I'm writing this with. Some sub-folders have "sub-sub-folders" within them as evidenced by the "+" boxes in front of them. It's possible to organize a vast number of documents using this tree structure, and still be able to find any of them quickly. You can always click Tools > Find > Files or Folders > Browse to search "My Documents" instead of your whole C:\ drive if one of the files eludes you. [more]

Tips & Tricks

Other programs may not be as cooperative as Works. You can always put a shortcut in their default document folder that points to your "My Documents" folder. Then when the "Save As" window opens you can navigate to the desired folder with one or two clicks.

One of my all time favorite programs, "iHarvest One", called for a different trick. iHarvest One saves Web pages in its own well organized database There's a problem though -- the database is one of the iHarvest One's program sub-folders -- and it can't be moved.

These downloaded pages/files are big and I didn't want them taking up a lot of space in my regular "program files" location (the D:\ drive at that time). So... I just put iHarvest One on the E:\ drive, which had plenty of space available. It's not my usual location for program files, but I can remember this exception pretty well when planning backups, etc., and work around it.

[Back to Part 1] [Continue to Part 3]