I had to reinstall the operating system on my MacBook last week. (I paid someone to do it for me.) If you’re interested, you can read some details about that in this blog post on my organizing blog. As a result, I spent some time focusing on the contents of the Documents folder of my hard drive before the big day.
I thought my genealogy documents were quite well organized on my hard drive. (I organize my documents in a Genealogy folder and Surname subfolder, by surname, then person.) Turns out, they weren’t quite as well organized as I thought. I was surprised to see that I had all sorts of loose files, some of them properly named, others with gibberish image names, floating around on my hard drive. Many were in my Downloads folder. Some were in the Genealogy folder. There are probably more elsewhere that I haven’t yet found.
It was actually quite a boon. Many of them I had not processed into my Reunion software. Some offered clues and insights. And it feels so much better to know things actually are well organized. (Or at least to have the illusion they are.)
If you download documents from Ancestry or elsewhere or if you scan documents into your computer, it might be worth 15 minutes to poke around your hard drive and see if there are any stray documents that didn’t make it into the proper folder!
Hi Janine. I don’t know how many of you keep up with all the blogs you follow. I know I can’t, so periodically I cull the list. My point being that yours is one that I do not drop.
About this particular blog. for many years years, when I get a new hard drive, I split the drive into at least 2 partitions. One being the C drive for programs etc. The other/s is/are for data.
Most problems occur with the C drive (viruses, etc). This means a complete re-install does not remove the data, very useful if you are slack and don’t back up. (I do.)
Hi, John. Thanks so much for your kind goods about the blog. I think I used to partition with my Windows, but haven’t with my Macs. I’ll ask my Mac guy about it next year when I get a new machine. Thankfully, I do back up, but I did spend some time culling things before the reinstall. It seemed akin to decluttering before moving house. Thanks again for the comment.
Good advice – I find the way that Apple organises my files is less then helpful. I want subject based folders where Apple seems to organise for me by type of file – hence I often lose things because i don’t remember if it is a pdf or a text doc or image. Most frustrating
I don’t think Apple will organize by subject for you, but I want to make sure you’re aware that you can sort your files by way other than type. Date, for instance, or size of file. But that’s probably not very helpful! I find the search function to be pretty helpful. All that said, I sure did find a lot of loose files I didn’t remember downloading! Thanks for commenting.
I do use the date function and search functions regularly. If I named my files more clearly it would also help:)
Yeah, there’s that. I finally got very consistent with file names for my genealogy files and that’s made all the difference. None of those loose files were appropriately named!
I always look forward to reading your new posts Janine. You’re a constant inspiration towards organization! One place I always sputter is with duplication of digital files e.g.if I had a census record with parents and ten children listed, would I put copies of that census file in all twelve folders? Do you have any tips for curbing the duplication of records. Thank you!
Nina, thanks so much for your kind words!
What I do with a census record is place a copy of it in each parent’s digital folder and then in the folder of the child who is my direct-line ancestor child. I’ll note the data from the census in Reunion for each of the siblings on the census, but I don’t keep complete folders of documents for the collateral-line ancestors if it’s a source I have in the direct-line ancestor’s file (like a census). Does that make sense? I don’t know that it’s the right way to do it, but it’s the way that works for me.
I love your blog Janine and can hardly wait to read the next post. I’m an avid organizer myself and am always looking for organization tips. I organize my files similar to what you mentioned above except inside each surname file, instead of individual names, I have subfolders named: Birth, death, marriage, census, land records, letters and stories, photos…etc. iinside each subfolder I have the files, this way I don’t have the same census files 10 times, just once and I can pull it up and use it for any of the family members. I keep different file types all in one place, pdf, word doc, pictures, etc…it’s all there. I have a large external drive plugged into my computer where I store my backup.
I love that there’s no one right way to do this and that there are many options. Thank you for sharing your file structure! I appreciate your commenting and your kind words!