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by brudgers 501 days ago
I started using computers in 1980.

Relatively recently, I settled on a file naming convention.

Start file names with yymmdd because it has a clear meaning that won't change (make it yyyymmdd if you need 100+ years).

Add whatever else might be relevant metadata to the end.

Maybe put it in a folder with relevant metadata in its name.

This will even work with MS-DOS's 8+3.

When I did something is almost always relevant to finding a file...because finding a file means I remember doing something relevant to the reason I am looking.

YMMV and your organization may have different standards (but it probably uses logs and what is a log but a set of timestamps?)

1 comments

It's very similar to mine. For instance, for invoices/bills, I do “YYYY-MM-DD $123.45 some-description.ext”—it makes it easy to know what this is and the associated value without even opening the file anymore.

About 8+ years ago, I did this for a team, and that team followed all expense reporting and filenames (or some variations) to what I set with mine.