Your workspace
Naming things so you can find them
Three naming rules worth more than any folder structure.
People argue a lot about how to organise folders and hardly at all about how to name things, when it should be the other way round: with good names you find everything even with a mediocre structure, and with bad names no structure saves you.
The three rules
- 1
Start with what distinguishes it
If you search by client, the client goes first. If by site, the site.
- 2
Include the identifier people actually use
The order number, the registration, the site code. The one said out loud, not a new one.
- 3
And the date in sortable format
2026-08 sorts properly; August 2026 does not. Only if the date matters.
Important
The second pays off most and is broken most. If in the office the job is "the port one" and in the system it is "EXP-2026-0448", there are two vocabularies and someone must translate each time. Include both: nobody ever regretted a slightly longer name.
What not to include
| Not this | Why |
|---|---|
| "final", "definitive", "good" | A "final2" always appears |
| The author's initials | It stops meaning anything when they leave |
| Abbreviations only one department understands | Nobody else will ever search for them |
| The version, if the system already tracks it | It duplicates information and drifts out of sync |
Watch out
The first row seems trivial and is not: "contract_final_v3_reviewed.pdf" lives alongside "contract_final_good.pdf" and nobody knows which governs. If there are versions, mark them as versions; the name is not the place.
And with contacts
Duplicate contacts are the number one cause of "I can't find it", and they almost always come from writing the same name three different ways.
Worth knowing
None of this is needed if you search inside documents, which works fine with bad names. But names appear in listings, and that is where the time actually goes.
›Should old material be renamed?
No. Apply it to new material; old material is found by content.
›What if each department wants its own?
Agree only on the shared identifier; the rest can vary.
›Are automatic codes any good?
Yes, but alongside the human name: a bare code forces translation.
A real case
The situation
A team has three records for the same supplier, spelled three ways.
What you do
- Unifies by tax identifier and uses the full legal name
What you get
Searches return one record and the supplier's history stops being split.
The situation
Files are named with acronyms only one person understands.
What you do
- Uses names anyone on the team understands
What you get
Finding stops depending on one person.
The situation
Two files have nearly identical names.
What you do
- Adds what distinguishes them to the name
What you get
Nobody works on the wrong one.
The situation
The name includes a date in three different formats.
What you do
- Agrees one format and applies it
What you get
Alphabetical order becomes useful.
The situation
A search by name returns nothing.
What you do
- Searches by content rather than name
What you get
The name stops being the only route.
The situation
Each person names things their own way.
What you do
- Agrees the convention and writes it down
What you get
The archive is readable for everyone.
This article answers
- how to name files
- file naming convention
- organising project names
- criteria for naming documents