The naming of files and folders is becoming increasingly important, the volume of data being stored electronically has increased dramatically over the last few years with the paperless office becoming a reality for most businesses it is becoming more important to get data structures better organised.
With file and folder names the following basic rules should be observed to ensure data stability and prevent backup errors.
- File paths which are made up of file names including the folders they are contained within must not exceed 255 characters for example this path "S:\DATA\Drivers\Intel\dg965ry\Audio_IDT_92XX_Driver\AUD_allOS_D20001.0x_PV_IDTGUI_v105" contains 87 characters
- Network drives, the 255 character limit should be reduced to allow room for the server name and share name
- File names should not contain spaces, if you wish to be able to email links to your documents
Including the date in the file name is also helpful when viewing sorted files but to get the file list to sort logically the date needs to use the ISO format with the largest number first for example using the format yyyy-mm-dd-hhmm a word document you wish to keep multiple versions of would be named something like MyProjectFileName_2010-05-31-1345.DOCX
