Tips and tricks

Tips and tricks - most of them very easy

A. How do I organise the hundreds of pages of lecture notes, and all the web pages and files I download? Here is how.

1. My computer is partitioned, and I NEVER use ‘my documents’ since there are several ‘my documents’ on my computer, and I am the sole user! It is also hidden away under c:\documents and settings\user\my documents.

To find the location of ‘my documents’ is a big pain whenever you want to do any rearranging of files. I never have this problem, because on partition e:\ I have created a directory called ‘docs’. It is extremely easy to get to.

2. I then have a directory per subject. I assign 3-5 letters to each directory, for instance

esp for ESP

phn for phonetics

psy for psycholinguistics

Now, this is the neat bit. I use these directory names in my filenames. So for instance, lesson1.phn.doc would be lesson 1 in phonetics, and this is a Word Document. More likely, because I am a fan of Word Perfect, I would have lesson1.phn.wpd which means lesson 1 in phonetics, as a Word Perfect file. On the other hand, lesson1.psy.wpd would be lesson 1 of psycholinguistics.

I can put these names into my lecture notes, so when I see the filename I know exactly where it is filed.