Where did I put that...?

It's getting scary. I've downloaded so much material from the web that I really have trouble locating it. I did buy an external hard drive to save the good things but even that is like a black hole of digital information. What to do?


Tell me if this doesn’t sound familiar. You’re surfing the Internet and find this really cool sales page. You start reading it and you think to yourself, wow, this really sounds like it could make me a few bucks. So you whip out your credit card, make your purchase and download the new wonder.


But then the dinner bell rings and you have to go and eat before your wife starts filing divorce papers because you’re spending too much time on the computer. Well, one thing leads to another and you don’t get to go back to look at your latest purchase until the next day; except there’s a problem.


Seems that this little buying frenzy is common place for this person and their hard drive looks like something out of Fahrenheit 451. Burning the hard drive might be the only way to actually find anything on it.


Like I said pretty familiar, right? I thought so. Well, it doesn’t have to be like this. I have personally found a perfect way to deal with this problem and I will now pass it along to you. It’s a great system and I am sure you are going to love it. It does require that you keep up with it to make it work, but if you do, you’ll find your purchases flowing like water.


Whenever you make a purchase and go to download it, don’t just dump it into “My Books” or “Downloads” or wherever you put it. That’s why you can’t find anything. You need to put these things where at least you will have a snowball’s chance of locating whatever it is you’re looking for.


What you’re going to do is create a subfolder for each item you download. You can create it under any main folder you choose. Just remember what it is.

You’re going to name the subfolder according to one of the following conventions. You choose the one that you’re most comfortable with.


Date Of Purchase – You’ll name the sub folder with the purchase date of the item. Use the yyyymmdd format so that when you do a sort, the folders appear in the order in which they were downloaded and created, even if you do an alpha sort.


Name Of Author – Name the sub folder the person who’s product it is. This way, if you download multiple products by this person, you simply dump them all into his folder.


Name Of Product – For those who just want to get right to the product itself, and this is the best way, simply create a folder that is the name of the product that you downloaded. This way you know exactly what’s in it when you look for it.

Naturally, you will have to create these folders on the fly as you actually do your download. This way, you have an ongoing process of keeping track of every item you’ve downloaded. Over time, as these items add up, this system will save you a lot of time and aggravation trying to find that latest money maker.

Greg Cryns
All About San Luis Obispo