How to Use Long File Names to Make Your Computer Easier and More Organized

Have you ever been stuck in visitors behind an automobile with one of these custom license plates like “LUVYZ1,” and you are scratching your head for a couple of minutes seeking to discern out what on Earth it is supposed to intend?

I changed into doing that in advance these days on my way home, and it made me think of a computer tip I thought I’d percentage with you to make your Pc more prepared and less complicated to apply.

Back in the day when I first got into computers, the names of documents on your laptop have been plenty like custom automobile license plates: you had a completely restrained amount of space to call the file and so that you have been forced to provide you with bizarre abbreviations much like you notice on license plates.

I nevertheless have some actually vintage Word files that have names and “MITYLIKE.DOC,” where I had to try and describe what the record became the eight characters I changed into given to achieve this. (If you’re now not positive what I mean by using “characters,” it’s the term that consists of letters, numbers, and punctuation) If you are thinking, the above example is a short tale I wrote in 1990 or so that became stimulated using The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a conventional quick tale written by James Thurber, which also made a right into a movie starring Danny Kaye. Knowing that, you could see why I named the record MITYLIKE and may probably also see why I wanted; I should’ve given it an extended and extra descriptive call?

So what does this should do with making your laptop more prepared and less complicated, you might be questioning? Well, something I’ve observed over the numerous years I’ve been assisting human beings with their computers is that most people do not benefit from the capacity to use descriptive file names. They’re making things more difficult for themselves as a result. Now, this is no complaint if you’re making this PC mistake yourself, but that is why I’m penning this that will help you.

You see, within the Nineties, the most period for report names went up plenty from the vintage 8 men or woman call plus three men or woman extension for DOS or Windows PCs, and the 31 men or woman limit older Apple Mac computer systems had to 255 characters. (The “extension” is the stop element after the dot, including.DOC used to tell the pc what type of report it’s miles, including a Word DOCument.)

These “long filenames” provide you with the ability to present useful & descriptive record names, which could make your life less complicated whilst organizing and finding documents. You can call (or rename) a record via clicking as soon as on the document’s call (no longer the icon!), pausing a moment, then click once more, and you must see the name get highlighted.

Note: this is *now not* similar to double-clicking the document call. This is a single click, a brief pause, then a 2d unmarried click on with the left button on your mouse.

You can then kind in a pleasant long descriptive document call which includes “Unnamed brief tale stimulated through “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The document”, which I’m sure you will agree, is tons less difficult to understand than “MITYLIKE.DOC”! And don’t worry approximately counting the letters inside the call whilst you are typing; your laptop might not let you kind any greater than you are allowed.

I also advise you to position a date or perhaps a version range into the report name, particularly if you hold distinctive file drafts. If you try this, you may want to write the date something like 7-7-2011 in place of 7/7/2011 as the / character isn’t always allowed on Windows PCs (and I endorse this for Mac users too to make the name more like-minded in case you ever ship it to a Windows PC).

One remaining element is, as I noted above, the extension (together with.Doc) is there for a motive, and you need to go away that element as-is. Many more recent computers will robotically assist you to avoid changing that a part of the document name, however now not all do. By taking the long filenames allowed using current computer systems, you may help yourself greater without problems apprehend what a document is. It may help turn up the file you are searching out if you do a search on your PC for the information you are desiring, that image you need to take a look at, and so forth.

Hopefully, these recommendations will assist you in getting more from your computer and make your existence a bit less difficult. I’ve used those hints myself for many years now and am very happy that I did.

Worth Godwin is a computer train with over 15 years’ enjoy assisting computer users of all tiers, and has also labored for decades “inside the trenches” as a hardware and software tech, solving actual-world computer problems.