FINALLY! An established system to follow, to find files quickly!

How many hours have you been looking for a photo? And how many times has that happened?

Remember that classic photo of your daughter at the game in 2005? It’s the one you wanted to frame for the grandparents you’ve been looking for for the past two years. In what month was the photo taken? Where did I keep my photos that year? Can you even remember which computer it was on? That was five years ago!

With the photo storage system that you will learn here, within seconds after you start searching, you can easily find photos by event and event date. This system works with ANY computer operating system: Windows, Mac, Linux, you name it.

Organizing your images so that you can find them is a simple process if you have a system. The biggest challenge in setting up a filing system is deciding which categories to use. I will give you my service suggestion, which will make your life MUCH easier once you set it up. And of course you can modify it as you see fit. Follow this system, set it up ONCE, then use it every time you apply and you will love your computer and be the envy of everyone in the know.

This system is very easy, this is what my “Images” folder looks like:

Photos

• + 2005
• + 2006
• + 2007
• + 2008
• + 2009
• + 2010

Of course, there are subfolders under the folders for each year; for example, the folder “2005” has the following subfolders:

Photos

+ 2005

• – Inauguration 050120 Pres
• – 050303 Cadillac STS
• – 050310 Gilson Animals
• – Wedding reception 050326 Downs
• – 050413 Arlington Cemetery AF Funeral
• – 050502 City and Convention of Las Vegas
• – 050709 Bike trip along the C&O canal
• – 050729 Cedar Point Park OH
• – 050903 VA Beach day
• – 050905 IM and children in DC
• – 050910 Las Vegas IAOMT Mtg
• – 050922 Legacy Leader Event
• – 051001 Parents’ trip to Italy
• – 051005 Utah NSE Convention
• – 051020 Arl Cemetery with cooks
• – 051024 N. Racker birthday dinner
• – 051029 Trip to Williamsburg
• – 051124 Thanksgiving Dinner
• – 051203 Christmas decoration
• – 051210 M1 Ward Cmas Party
• – 051217 Mckenzie Bball
• – 051225 Christmas Eve and tomorrow

You You may not be able to figure out what all of that is, but I know each event and I can remember several of the photos stored there, just from the description of the folder I created! Not only do I have everything organized and labeled, but I’ve basically set up an automatic journal of the highlights of my life that year.

Why order by date? Because it is an automatic way to remember and the easiest way to configure folders. Any other method complicates things and forces you to remember a lot more details to find things. For example, if you sort by event type, like “kids sports”, you can divide it into subfolders of basketball, baseball, soccer, soccer, gymnastics, tennis, etc., but eventually you will have to sort by date under everything that anyway. Instead, with the system I have above, you can almost always remember WHEN an event took place, which makes it much quicker and easier to find things.

For the reason for setting the event dates (“050120”) as above, please read my article, “How to name and date computer files and folders for fast and effective organization.”

One more organizational note for the photos section: I keep my own home videos in my photos folder. That way I have personal photos and videos together for much easier searching, as events are tagged once, with one folder for everything. Also, it is less complicated for me if the photos and videos come from the same camera or camcorder, which is increasingly the case. And best of all, I can relive memories in both images and videos.