Spring Cleaning II: Get Organized!

Following up “Take a Trip to the Dump,” we present chapter 2 in a series of helpful Spring Cleaning tips and hints to make sure your computer (and your data) is optimized, organized, and secure.

Maybe you’re one of those perfectly organized people who neatly sort their files into one of dozens of specifically-named folders on your hard drive, and you always know where to find data because you’ve developed a terrific system over the years, hence all your files are exactly where they should be.

Or, more likely, maybe not. Time to get organized.

Check out all those files, shortcuts and folders on your Desktop:

• Are they there for a purpose, or just because that’s where they ended up and you haven’t taken the time to move them to a more appropriate location? File them.
• How are your documents titled? Can you identify the contents from the file names alone, or do you actually have to open the files to figure out what’s in them? If so, rename the files to something descriptive. It’s the 21st century, so don’t limit yourself to 8 character file names.
• Go into your My Documents folder (or Documents folder in Mac OS X) and sort the wheat from the chaff. Create new folders if necessary to store your files.
• Look at any files you store on the network; do they all need to be there?
• Are your web browser bookmarks or favorites so numerous they can’t all be displayed on the screen? Sort them out.

Have questions? Need assistance? Call the OIT Help Desk at 426-4357, or contact us via email at helpdesk@boisestate.edu