File organization is one of my most beloved class topics. Now, anyone who has seen my desk at work might argue with that assertion, but it’s true-- this is the basis for one of the first activities that my Basic Computers students and I do, and it’s always an eye opener, despite its relative simplicity.

My fondness for the topic stems from the many, many years that I spent bumbling around on computers, hitting the “Save” button willy-nilly and losing all manner of papers, photographs, and ephemera due to my lack of understanding of the default organization of information on my computer, and my stubborn, if subconscious, refusal to pay attention to the signals and guideposts that are actually built into the process to help us computer users better organize ourselves. I finally picked up a few really, really simple skills for staying on top of where things go, or have gone, on my computer, and how to save those pictures of family gatherings and/or pets so that I could successfully post them to Facebook later.

Here are the high points for local (that’s the physical computer in front of you) file organization simplification:

The Desktop--this is what you see when you first turn your computer on, before you zoom onto the internet. You might have the background of this space personalized with a picture, but there are certainly at least a few icons floating around in this area above the taskbar at the bottom of the screen.

The desktop of your computer, most importantly, is a file location, and a simple one. You can create folders here where files can be stored, and it’s a visually simple area to access. To create a folder on your desktop, you’ll use that seldom-clicked right-side button on your mouse. Right-click in an area of the desktop where there are no icons, and choose “New” from the menu that pops up. On the next menu, choose “Folder.” While “New Folder” is still highlighted in blue underneath the nifty little folder icon that you’ve just created, change the name of the folder to whatever you’d like that you want to organize; I like to use dates or specific descriptors.

“Save As”-- when you’re creating text files, or any other kind of typed file, this is usually the option right below “Save,” but it allows you to be more proactive and in-control of your file saving options. When you choose “Save As,” a new window-- called a dialog box-- pops up, giving you a variety of saving options. At the top of this window, there’s actually a little line of text in a box that gives you a map of where you’re saving anything. On the left side of this window are a variety of options for locations to save your information. If you’re diligent and thoughtful, you should be able to find, or navigate to the desktop from this left side menu. The center of the dialog box will change as you explore different file locations, and when you’ve selected the desktop, your personalized new folder will show up in the list of desktop stuff. Double-click on the icon for your new folder, and click “Save” at the bottom of the dialog box, to save your item in that folder.

Don’t forget to change the File Name of whatever you’re saving-- that’s in another little white space at the bottom of that dialog box. It’ll make it easier to distinguish between files.

Search--Yes, there is a search function built right in to your computer, because they anticipated that we’d organize to our little hearts’ content but forget where we put everything and what we named it. You may have never noticed this, but on your Start menu, after you click whatever icon is in the bottom leftmost corner of your screen (for XP users, this still says “Start,” but Vista and beyond have a small, circular Windows logo down there), one of the options, marked with a magnifying glass, is “Search,” or a little ready-to-go white space that says “Search programs and files.” Do not be afraid to use this! In fact, if you can remember ANY word or any part of the file or file name that you’ve lost so completely, this handy little tool will retrieve it for you, probably with more than one option. It’s a great, super useful application, and most people ignore it completely. Don’t be that guy! Help yourself!