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Here are some quick tips and guidelines on how to keep track of your files and avoid disaster of losing your documents that you have worked for hours. Here are some tips taken from the sample chapter from Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003, Student-Teacher Edition*. Where to save files? In Windows XP, the files you create belong in one place: the My Documents folder. This folder is a part of your personal profile, which is created when you set up your user account in Windows XP. Using this folder as the default location for your personal data files makes it easier for you to find and back up files you create. In Windows XP, the My Documents icon is never more than two clicks away—it’s located at the top of the right column in the Start menu, and in Windows Explorer it’s just below the Desktop. When you click the File menu and choose Open or Save As from within any Office program, the resulting dialog box takes you straight to the My Documents folder. As we’ll discuss a bit later in this chapter, you can also get to the My Documents folder by clicking its icon in the Places Bar along the left side of those dialog boxes. Good File Naming Conventions. After you create a new file, the first thing you should do is save it, and as you work on it you should get in the habit of saving it regularly. What’s the best name to use? If the file is for your own personal use, you can make up your own file-naming system. If you’re working as part of a team in a small office or classroom, you’ll want to devise a standard that everyone can agree on, and then follow that standard. Whether the file-naming system is just for you or for an entire team, the most important guideline is to be consistent. As we explain in this chapter, you can use a variety of search tools to find just about any file. But a file with a descriptive name is much easier to pick out of a list. Some people begin each filename with a keyword (report, homework, budget) that helps define the type of content. You might want to add the creation date (using a format YYYYMMDD) to help you see at a glance which version of a file is the most recent one: “Homework - English 101 – 20051031″ is pretty descriptive, wouldn’t you say? Searching Office Documents. The Open dialog box displays a list of all files and subfolders in a single folder. Searching for a specific file can be tedious if the folder is full of files with similar names, or if it’s organized into many subfolders. So how do you find the exact file you’re looking for? From any Office program, you can open the Search task pane, which enables you to search for files, Outlook items, or web pages by using almost any criteria. If you can remember a few scraps of information about the file—part of the name, a date, or even a word or phrase that you remember using in the document—you can probably find it. Browse a more detailed article about Keeping Track of Your Files and Settings in Microsoft Office by Woody Leonhard, Ed Bott.

*The Student-Teacher Edition of Microsoft Office 2003 is the best-selling version of the software suite, and Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003, Student-Teacher Edition is the first book to tackle it from the perspective of this unique user. The SE Using format will help you explore advanced techniques that can save you time and help automate repetitive tasks. You will be able to increase your productivity in all areas of any one of the Microsoft Office 2003 applications. You’ll also learn ways to make them work better together, further increasing your productivity. Take a look at Microsoft Office 2003 through the eyes of an expert with Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003, Student-Teacher Edition.

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