How to Organise Files and Folders in a Consistent and Logical Manner

When working collaboratively on files in a document management system, it’s important that folders and files are named in a logical manner so they can be located as easily as possible by everyone who requires access to them. Here are some of the best standard practices that you can follow for naming your files and folders, to keep your portal organised and structured.

• Keep file names short, but descriptive and easily understandable to others. (<25 characters)
• Use capital letters to delimit words, as the preferred option, although underscores (_) or hyphens (-) may add clarity, they make the file name longer.
• For numbers 0-9, always use a minimum of two digit numbers to ensure correct numerical order (e.g. 01, 02, 03 etc.)
• Dates should always follow same format: YYYYMMDD e.g. 20170425
• When including a personal name give the family name first followed by initials, with no comma in between e.g. SmithAB
• Avoid using common words such as ‘draft’ or ‘letter’ at the start of file names unless doing so will make it easier to retrieve the record.
• Use alphanumeric characters i.e. letters (A-Z) and numbers (0-9). Avoid using invalid characters in file names such as *? \ / : # % ~ { }
• The version number of a record should be indicated in its file name by the inclusion of ‘V’ followed by the version number (e.g. V01, V03 etc.). However versioning is enabled automatically in systems such as Office 365, One Drive and Clinked, making it unnecessary to duplicate this information in the file name itself.
  
  

Examples