As an I.T. support person I find myself frequently expounding on the need for care when constructing a file name. And invariably I get the all familiar "Deer in headlights" facial stare back. Either that or I get total disbelief. And once in a while I get the excuse that "If we aren't supposed to do that then the computer shouldn't let me do it!". Usually, I don't have the time or the care to explain why I'm saying what I'm saying. After all, I'm the computer professional here. So, allow me to vent a little and while doing so, explain why you should adopt some good practices while naming new files.
File Naming Conventions
The rules of thumb
- Avoid spaces. They get replaced which can become a problem later.
- Never any periods, commas or any other punctuation. I said NEVER!
- Keep it short. A long filename means you need a folder or two.
Here are the reasons why, for each rule
And please keep in mind that these are guidelines not hard rules. Not following them may have no ill effects on you, however, they could have ill effects on some other poor schmuck like me. So please, just do them and we can all live and work together with less strife.
1. Avoid spaces
Some computer systems will replace a space with "%20" so your filename of "My File is named this.doc" becomes "My%20File%20is%20named%20this.doc". Very ugly and hard to read. Web servers do this because they just don't like spaces, I think. The argument I always get is "Well, I'm never going to put this file on a web server so this doesn't apply to me". To this I say "That is not a valid excuse for doing something wrong!". And who knows what may become of your file in the future. There is a chance that some guy like me is going to be asked to archive your files or some such thing. And your use of a lot of spaces or other punctuation for that matter will become a real headache for future me. Or maybe a co-worker is searching for your file and because it has these wrong characters in the name it fails to be located by the search. Trust me, I could go on and on with possible scenarios of how this can be a problem. So please, just don't do it. If you really need separation in a file name, use the accepted underscore character. So the example above would be "My_File_is_named_this.doc" Still easy to read and completely acceptable in all computer systems. Some will even remove the underscore and replace it with a space automatically so that a search for "File is named" will match it.
2. Never any periods
For a long time in the olden days of DOS, filenames could not be any longer than 8 characters with a period at the end and then followed by 3 characters that represented what "type" of file it was. So filename.doc would tell us that this is a "document" and filename.exe told us that this was an "executable" file. Executables were programs that we could type in the name of (the first 8 characters) and the computer would know to "execute" or "run" this file like it was a program.
Then came Windows and Mac and mice. The period and 3 characters were still used as the computer's main way of determining what kind of file this was, but it also expanded this and allowed for many more definitions of what each 3 characters were. Things like .jpg for a JPEG formatted image file or .pdf for a file formatted in "Public Document Format" which required a "PDF reader" program to view it. And so on and so forth. But Windows decided that users don't need to be bothered with the dot-3 character part of a filename so by default it now hides this information from view. It also felt that users should be able to use more characters and depending on hardware limitations it grew up to 255 characters allowed by Windows in a filename. They also increased the dot-3 characters to be larger as well.
Just because the Operating System allows it does not mean we should use it! You can quickly complicate your life and the life of others by using filenames that are long. But even worse, if you put periods in those filenames that are long it's possible for things to go afoul. And Windows hiding the last 3 can be the contributing factor. For example, let's say that you have a word document that you save with a long name of "this is my word document created 2.4.17" and when you clicked SAVE, Windows added the dot-doc to the end of that. And you email attached this to someone else. They decided that your document needed a spreadsheet of information in it. So they decided to create an Excel spreadsheet and import your document into this new spreadsheet, but they named it the same as your original which showed to them as "this is my word document created 2.4.17.doc" and when they saved it Excel added the ".xlsx" to the end of it. Then they emailed it back to you. You save it out of your email and it saves as "this is my word document created 2.4.17.doc". What? Somehow it left off the new ".xlsx" from the end of the file. Probably because it was too long for the email program to deal with it or perhaps it was all those periods in the filename that confused the email program. It doesn't matter why only that this happens more often than you can imagine. You now double click the filename and Windows sees the ".doc" on the end and attempts to open it in Word. Word then says "This file is corrupt" and cannot open it. Another call to I.T.
Avoid this happening to you or your loved ones. DON'T USE PERIODS in a filename. If you use a period make sure that it's only one and it is followed by only three characters and they correctly identify the format of the file you are saving. And please, force Windows to show you the file extensions on every filename. It's in your "FOLDER OPTIONS" under the 'VIEW" tab. Search The Internet for how to do it if you don't already know.
So the rule is actually no punctuation of any kind EXCEPT: the dash "-" or the underscore "_" AND if you use a period it must be in the 4th position from the end of the name and followed by the correct 3 characters to identify the format of the file. (eg: my_file.txt) It's the only way to name a file insuring that it's name won't be a problem in the future or with any other operating system that may encounter it in the future.
3. Keep it short
By this point you should be getting the picture. This last rule goes more towards being able to find things when browsing the file system. Microsoft and others are pushing everyone to use search because over recent years of them allowing people to use long filenames those people have started having trouble finding their files. You open a folder view and see hundreds of
"My Expense Report fro......."
"My Expense Report fro......."
"My Expense Report fro......."
"My Expense Report fro......."
"My Expense Report fro......."
and can't see the date that is in the filename in order to find the one you really want. This is a clear example of failing to use the folders that God and Microsoft have given us. Anytime you are struggling with making a filename and feeling like it needs to be more than 3 words long think of it as a green light for making folders. IF a file lives inside a folder named "Expense_Reports" then you don't need to include the words "Expense Report" in the filename. It's location has already explained that these are all Expense Report files. You can go another step and make another sub-folder and name it "January". So now you know that any files inside "Expense_Reports" and then inside "January" are expenses that happened in January. Making it unnecessary to use those names in the actual filename.
When doing this kind of folder making it's helpful to try and make it go from the most general to the more specific. And think how best to organize. For example, rather than having "Expense_Report" be the top most folder, perhaps it would be better to have the Year be the top most. Or maybe it's better to have the year under Expense_Report and then inside the Year have the Months. In this case it just depends on what works best for you.
The take-away of this is pay attention and if you are using more than 3 words to name a file you need to STOP and ask yourself if you could use some folders to help identify this file. And if this is something you are maybe going to email to someone else and you are feeling you need to use more words to identify it STOP and decide to use those generic words of identification in your email message instead of in the name of the file.
Final Thoughts
Do yourself and everyone else a favor. At least follow these rules I've outlined here for you. I would also encourage you to do some searching on The Internet for helpful ideas on how best to organize using file and folder names. There are several very good articles that dive deeper into this subject. They are more about how to organize folders than they are about naming the file itself, but it's all very useful to any computer user.
Here are a few I've seen just quickly searching on Google:
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