Why File Management?
I bought my first personal computer back in 1986. My brother-in-law, who worked with computers daily, promptly gifted me a bright pink book on file management. “I’m sure this doesn’t look very exciting right now,” he said, “but you’ll thank me someday.”
I thanked him graciously, taking the book home with me. There, I glanced through the pages and, finding nothing of interest, I set it on a bookshelf next to my computer and forgot about it.
A few months later, I was finding it quite difficult to find the files I needed when I needed them. “Where is that essay I started writing as part of my graduate school application?” I wondered. “And what about the budget proposal my boss asked me to create in Excel?”
What were the names of those files? Where were they hiding? Sometimes I would open and close a half-dozen files or more until I found the one I wanted.
In the midst of one of those frustrating searches, I spied that bright pink book my brother-in-law had given me. “Oh ho!” I said to myself. “I’ll bet this is the ‘someday’ I was told would come.” It was time to crack open that book on file management.
This time, the text wasn’t so boring to me. It spoke of understanding different file types. It suggested naming conventions to make my files easier to identify. It taught me about folders and subfolders and giving sensible names to those folders so they would inform me of what files to expect inside of them. I learned to move, copy, rename, and delete files and folders. While reading and learning, I eagerly dove into my hard drive and began organizing my files in ways that made sense to me. Suddenly, I was spending far less time looking for my files, and more time productively working on them.
At a minimum, it is important to give your files names that make sense. And it is critical to know where you are saving those files to. Without these basic skills, it is almost guaranteed that, at some point, you will lose an important file.
So watch the assigned videos and complete the practice project for this module.
You’ll thank me someday.
File Management Videos on LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning is a website devoted to educational videos, and using it is free for Parkland students, faculty, and staff.
Click here to watch LinkedIn Learning videos on file management.
File Management Practice
To practice your file management skills, click on the documents below: "File Management Practice folder instructions," "Files to Use," and "Example."
After downloading the "Practice_File_Mgt.zip" folder, locate it. It will probably be in your Downloads folder on your hard drive.
Then right-click the folder and select "Extract All."
Once you have completed the File Management Practice, you can email your Word document to Leann McPike at lmcpike@parkland.edu.
