What I’ve learnt from attempting to be paperless

Moving from mainly paper to as paperless as possible document management, I’ve learnt:

Use meaningful file names

Windows allows file names of up to 256 characters. That's enough to give documents meaningful names fully describing their contents, the fuller the description the better because searching inside documents remains hard.

Add more keywords if you think this will help.

Property fields

I prefer not to save in Word format for a variety of reasons but if you do store Microsoft Word documents, use the property fields. You can get to these in Word 2007 by clicking the Microsoft Office Button , selecting Prepare and then Properties.

Date information is stored automatically when you create or save a document.

Use document folders

Some say modern PC search tools mean folders are no longer as important as they were in the past. I disagree – sometimes you need an overview of related files.

Organise your documents into folders with relevant folder names. If it helps, nest them in sub folders. Use the same folder names to organise your email and browser favourites. I also use the same names for tagging.

Use email rules to automatically route messages to the right email folder. Pretty soon you’ll develop a routine of always storing documents in the right place and you’ll know where to find things.

Master desktop search

Learn how to use your computer’s search tools. Windows, Mac OS and Linux all have goodish tools as standard, but they are not foolproof.

If you move away from built-in search, the best tools for your needs depend on the applications you use. Some swear by alternatives such as Google Desktop Search and Copernic.

Google Desktop Search is bloated and slow, but adds your Gmail files to the database. Copernic is a good alternative and searches just about every file type you’ll meet. It doesn’t search Gmail and it’s not at its best when used with Windows Vista and Outlook.

Microsoft Outlook

I no longer use Microsoft Outlook for day-to-day email, but the application is a useful document management tool. You can search for and view document files as well as email messages. Remember emails are often also important documents.

Additional keywords

Use a document’s properties to store extra keyword information and comments. This is particularly useful if you have scanned documents stored as an image.