How do you organize downloaded files?

[lmsfam]

Hi
I was looking for ideas on what is the best way to organize files on my computer.  For example, census finds - What do you call the files you save?   Do you sort in folders by year? by the family? 

I have notes of all my finds in my family tree program, I am just trying to better organize all the files on my hard drive.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can offer...
Lisa

[Braindead]

I too am struggling with this problem and don't have a real solution to it.
I have a series of folders for indiviuals, but I also have other folders such as census, bmd, places etc. I even have one called "men" and one called "women". I also have folders within folders.
I simply put the files in the folder that seems most appropriate. Trouble is, I often seem to lose track of where things are!

[Roger The Hat]

All my folders are labelled by Surname,
subfolders are labelled by Given name and Surname,
and all files are preceded by the relevant date.

All BMD, census, and other information goes into the folder relevant to that individual. This does result in duplication, but it does mean that one folder will contain all the information for that person.

'Hat.

[Springbok]

The  way I order my returns (scanned BMD certs ,Census etc)  is to give  a folder  the Family name, then rename each download by year/date month for example as follows

 1840-12-1  marr. John Smith- Mary Jones /1841 census John Smith c.1812 carter / 1842-7-10 birth. Mary Smith/    and so on.Then just slide them into correct order.

This enables you to see by date how , as the descendants grow up , marry etc just what and when events happen in relation to each other.

Wish I had done this from the start, as it is taking me ages to do this now, having traced back quite a number of related ancestors .

Much like Roger, and of course you will have to duplicate where you follw another parent   

Spring

P.S Welcome to Rootschat Imsfam, hope you enjoy our company

[lmsfam]

Thank you for the suggestions.  I am sorry I didn't thank you sooner - the email alert that I got a reply to my post ended up in the spam folder of my email. 

Currently, I have different sides of my family organized in different ways and it's a mess!  I like the idea of all the information for one person in one folder titled by date. That does seem like a good way to find the orginals when I want to refer to them again.

I knew I would get some good ideas here!   

Thanks again,
Lisa

[downside]

The way computers do it is to assign a unique identifier to each individual:

I001 Smith, John
I002 Smith, Mary

Humans do not normally like numbers so if you want to use this method then you will need to keep a searchable index so you can trace which number you have assigned to each individual.

I001_census_1901.jpg
I002_census_1901.jpg